Psychic Revenge
by J0
Summary: Happily married and hugely pregnant, Olivia starts hearing voices and having nightmares. When she doesn't tell Elliot the truth about what's going on, he can't be there to protect her when she needs him most. Final chapter is up.
1. The World as It Should Be

_**Psychic Warfare**_

_**Chapter One  
The World as It Should Be**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
7:25 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

The alarm went off and he moaned. Her arms snaked around his neck.

"Just ten more minutes?"

"We've been saying that for the past half hour."

"Pleeeease?"

"Sorry . . . Sweetheart . . . ," he said between kisses. "But I've got to go."

"But I love youuuu!" she whined in a sweetly teasing tone.

This had become their routine in the months since she'd been on leave, and he enjoyed every moment of it. Still, in the end he always had to go to work. At least he'd been spared his on-call shifts. He had some great colleagues who, as soon as they learned of her medical condition, had volunteered to cover for him and a compassionate captain who was willing to juggle the whole squad's work schedules just so they could.

"I love you, too," he said, kissing her lips. Then he slid down the mattress and kissed one side of her very pregnant belly. "And you." He leaned over and kissed her on the other side of her stomach, "And you, too." Then he French kissed her right on her navel.

She moaned in delight and he kept it up until she took him gently by the ear and pulled him away.

"That's cruel," she said. Ironically, her libido had increased dramatically with her pregnancy, but at the same time, early complications had made sex off-limits for the duration. "Can't you just hold me for five more minutes?"

He continued to place loving kisses on her tummy, but avoided doing anything to intentionally arouse her. Pausing to speak between the kisses, he said, "I would love . . . to just cuddle all day . . . but if I'm late again . . . my partner . . . will kill me."

She laughed. "Your partner? What about your captain?"

"Next to that woman, Cragen's a pussycat," he said, affectionately resting his cheek against her swollen abdomen. "Hell, even on one of my bad days, _I'm_ a pussycat next to her."

"She isn't that bad, Elliot," she said smiling down at him.

"Yeah, well, you've never pissed her off." He replied, staring into her eyes and grinning. He was gazing up at her through the valley between her beautiful breasts and knew she would beat the crap out of him if she could read his thoughts at the moment. He was selfishly wishing he wouldn't have to give them up to the twins.

"I think you're afraid of her."

"Let's just say, she hasn't hit me with that impact baton yet, but I wouldn't put it past her."

He lay there for a moment, smiling, just enjoying the view. Then there was a thump against his palm.

"Oh," she grunted and grimaced in discomfort. "Did you feel that?"

"I sure did," he replied, moving to sit up beside her in the bed.

"That was Casey," she told him.

He gave her a disbelieving look and asked, "How can you tell?"

"Casey is the more aggressive of the two. She punches and kicks me all the time," Olivia explained. "Alexandra is more subtle. She squirms and moves around often, just to make sure I don't forget her, but she almost never strikes me."

"How will you know who is who when they come out?" he asked.

"We'll just have to watch them for a while and see which one shows potential as a kick boxer," she said simply.

"And that will be Casey?"

"Right."

"Which makes the other one Alexandra by default?"

"Right."

He grinned. "You've really thought this out rather carefully, haven't you?"

"I haven't had much else to do the past six and a half months."

"I wouldn't tell them that."

"Them who?" she asked teasingly. "The twins or their attorney godmothers?"

"Attorney godmothers," he echoed with a laugh. "That's cute, and both, or all four, however you want to count them."

He turned back the covers, and she pleaded with him, "Don't go."

He looked down at her and frowned in concern. "I'll call in sick if you need me here today," he said.

He watched as she considered his offer. He could tell by the way she pursed her lips that a very large part of her wanted to tell him to stay, but after twelve years together, he had learned not to make unilateral decisions if it could be helped.

Finally, she sighed and said, "You go on. I'll be all right; I just get bored being home all day."

Something about her tone said she was worried about more than boredom, but she didn't want to tell him.

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" she insisted.

"I thought you were looking forward to being a stay-at-home mom," he said, wondering if that was the issue.

"I am," she said, "but right now I'm a stay-at-home blob, and I'm getting sick of it!"

He smiled, thinking he understood the problem now. Leaning down, he gave her a long, sensual kiss, tangling his fingers in her hair and tracing the curves of one of her ears with his thumb. When they finally separated to catch their breath, he whispered in the sultriest, most seductive voice he could manage, "For the record, you are the sexiest blob I have ever seen."

"Mmm," she purred at first, enjoying the tickle of his breath against her ear. Then his words registered, and she clobbered him with a pillow. "Get to work before your partner beats you up!"

"Yes, ma'am," he chuckled as he plumped the pillow and replaced it on her side of the bed.

Olivia sighed and cuddled under the blankets, enjoying the view of her husband as he wandered around their bedroom in his birthday suit collecting the clothes he would be wearing that day. Once he had everything laid out on the armchair in the corner, he headed for the bathroom.

"Wake me when you're done in there," she called across the room.

"I won't have to," Elliot replied. "As soon as you hear the shower running, you'll have to pee like a racehorse and come barging in. Then you'll flush the commode and I'll get scalded in the shower."

"You don't know that!" she said indignantly.

"Yes I do," he said as he sauntered into the bathroom. "It's happened nearly every day for the past two months."

The door swung shut behind him, and she burrowed deeper under the blankets. She heard the space heater go on and the sound of Elliot's electric shaver. Then the whole house was silent for a moment. She heard the quiet thud of the pipes as he turned the shower on, and then the soft patter of water falling. Suddenly she felt a tremendous pressure deep inside her and a tingling between her legs. With a groan, she threw the covers off, grabbed her robe, and hurried to the bathroom.

"Told you so!" Elliot sang over the noise of the shower when she opened the door and slipped inside bringing the cold air from the bedroom with her.

"Sorry!" she replied as the steam swirled around her. She didn't mind him being right, but he didn't have to be such a smug bastard about it.

"It's all right," he told her. "It's not like I wasn't expecting it."

"Yeah, well, you try holding your water with an extra thirty-five pounds sitting directly on top of your bladder," she grumbled as she took care of her business.

"I don't mind you invading my privacy to handle your potty emergencies, Liv," he said good-naturedly, "but could you just not flush when I'm in the shower?"

"It's a habit, Elliot, and good hygiene," she reminded him as she admired the silhouette he cast on the shower curtain. "I _always_ flush after I use the toilet."

"All I'm asking is that you have a little more regard for my skin. The water heater is just on the other side of this wall, and getting blasted with a hundred and fifty-five-degree water straight from the tank hurts," he explained.

"It's not like I'm doing it on purpose," she told him as she finished what she was doing and pulled her robe tighter around herself.

He didn't pick up on the note of exasperation in her voice because of the bad acoustics of the bathroom tile and noise of the shower. If he had, he would have considered his next words more carefully.

"I know that, and I know the pregnancy hormones have you all messed up, so you probably just forget, but could you try a little harder to remember _not_ to flush it when I'm showering?" he requested.

"Ok, ok, I won't flush!" she said as she washed her hands in warm water at the sink. When she finished, she turned the cold spigot off and put the hot one on full blast.

She shut the door behind herself and slumped against it laughing when he heard him shriek like a girl in surprise as the unexpectedly frigid water hit his skin.

"Very mature, Liv," he yelled.

She opened the door a crack and called in, "At least I didn't flush!"

"Yeah, and payback's a bitch," he reminded her.

"Uh-huh," she said and shut the door again, smiling contentedly. He wouldn't do anything until she had recovered from giving birth, and by then, he would have forgotten the whole incident.

* * *

**Author's note: **Yeah, I know, it's EO, but EO isn't the story. It's just a vehicle for telling the story. I am trying to get this done for Halloween and had to take some shortcuts. Come along for the ride anyway, and if it's too much EO for your liking, you can tell me at the end. **Please review. **Thanks. -Jo 


	2. Voices

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Two  
Voices**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
7:48 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia heard feet running in the street and children shouting and laughing.

"He's so fat he can go as a pumpkin!" someone shouted.

"Leave me alone!" another child yelled back.

Frowning, Olivia moved toward the window, wondering what she would do when she got there. If she yelled down for the bully to leave the other child alone, he probably wouldn't listen, and it might make things even harder for the victim. But she couldn't listen to that kind of cruelty and just ignore it. She had seen its results too many times.

To her surprise, the street was empty. She looked up and down it, but saw no one. She opened the window and leaned out to get a better view. Still nothing. Shrugging, she said to herself, "They must have gotten on the school bus."

Letting the drapes fall shut, she wandered over to her closet, shedding her robe as she went. She didn't even have to decide what to wear. She wished now that she had splurged a little more on maternity clothes. At the moment she had only one clean pair of slacks and one top that fit.

Dickie, _no, it's Rick, now, _she reminded herself, _Rick_ was coming over after his ten o'clock class to finish painting the nursery and hanging the drapes. Maybe she could talk him into doing a couple of loads of laundry for her. Like most starving college kids, he would do almost anything for free food. She could fold it once it was out of the dryer, but after she'd had some spotting in her third month, her OB/GYN had given her such severe restrictions on how much she could lift and carry that she couldn't even do her own grocery shopping, let alone drag baskets of laundry from the bedrooms down to the basement and back upstairs.

"He's gonna get you!" The voice of the bully from before called.

"He's gonna get you! He's gonna get you!" Other children joined in.

"He's gonna get you!"

"He's gonna get you!"

"He's gonna get you!"

It seemed there was a gang of the little brats this time.

"The boogey man is coming!"

"Leave me _alone_!"

"He doesn't believe in that."

"Don't you know what happens on Halloween?" The ring leader asked.

"Yeah, we get candy."

The bullies' raucous laughter seemed to echo through the house. She pulled her clothes on quickly and opened the window to yell at them, but they weren't there.

"Maybe they're in the alley," she muttered and went to the spare bedroom in the back of the house.

The alley was empty except for a few pigeons bathing in the puddles on the asphalt.

"So, where they hell are they?"

"Where the hell are what?"

She jumped and screamed. Turning, she snapped, "Jesus, Elliot, don't sneak up on me like that! You scared the hell out of me."

He looked sincerely contrite as he apologized. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. You weren't in the bedroom when I finished my shower, so I came looking for you."

He looked so sexy in nothing but his briefs and a half-buttoned dress shirt that she couldn't stay angry. Crossing the room, she slipped her arms around him and said, "That's ok. Before you come down for breakfast, could you check the pockets of your pants and turn your socks inside out for me? I'm going to have Dickie load the washing machine when he comes to paint the nursery."

"Ok," he agreed easily kissing her on the forehead before he pulled back in her embrace and said, "and it's Rick, now, but first, can I help you find what you were looking for?"

"Not what, who. I heard some kids out in the street and it sounded like all of them were picking on this one boy," she explained. "When they weren't out front, I thought they might be back here in the alley, but they're not."

Elliot shrugged. "Maybe they got on the bus and you just missed them," he said walking back to their bedroom to finish dressing.

She didn't tell him she had been thinking the same thing just before she heard them the second time.

"Oh, and Maureen stopped by the precinct yesterday," he continued, as if it were an afterthought. "She, Jim, and Nathalie are bringing pizza around six on Monday, and they're going to bring Nattie's Halloween costume so we can get pictures."

"Ok, I'll make a salad and charge the batteries for the camera," she said agreeably. The bigger Olivia had gotten with her pregnancy, the more often Maureen and Jim had brought them food. Sometimes it was homemade fare, like lasagna, vegetable soup, roasted chicken, and other recipes she could easily double to share. Other times, it was raw steaks or burgers, drumsticks, kebabs, or other goodies Elliot could prepare on the grill. And every once in a while, they brought carryout pizza, Chinese food, or sandwiches from their favorite deli. At first it had bothered Olivia that the young couple was spending so much money feeding them. Then she found out that Jim, a contract lawyer, was on the fast track to partnership in his father's law firm, and it hadn't troubled her much since.

Maureen had married her college sweetheart a few months after graduation. They had been dating since she was an eighteen-year-old freshman and he was a first year law student, but she hadn't introduced Jim and Elliot until Jim had brought her home from her twenty-first birthday party. The young man had immediately impressed Elliot because he had gotten Maureen out of the bars when she was still sober enough to walk straight, he hadn't used the occasion to get her so drunk he could take advantage of her, he had volunteered to be the designated driver, and he had possessed the courage to personally deliver her to her father after her first legal night on the town.

Maureen had graduated _summa cum laude_, and that spring, Jim had passed the bar on his second try. The wedding had been in August, and after just four hours of labor, Nathalie Elizabeth Munro, Elliot's first grandchild, had been born the following June. The twins were going to have a niece who was four months older than they were, and Olivia wasn't sure what, if anything, she should feel about that. She was just happy that Nattie was healthy and would be thankful if her own girls entered the world as easily.

"What do you want for breakfast?" she called as she closed the blinds in the spare room.

"I'm running late enough that I think I'll just have some cereal, ok?" he called from the other room.

"Yeah, fine," she said distractedly as she crossed the spare bedroom to head downstairs so she could set the bowls and milk out for them.

"He's gonna get you!"

She whipped around and moved back to the window. The alley was still empty, but she could hear running and laughter in the street. She shuddered as a chill passed through her.

"Elliot!"

He came on the run. "What's wrong?"

"Did you hear them?"

"Who?"

"The kids!" she said as if he should know. "They yelled, 'He's gonna get you' and ran off laughing."

He shook his head and put his arms around her. She was shaking. He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap. "Olivia, relax."

"How can I relax?" she demanded. "If they aren't there, then that means I'm hearing things. How can I relax if I'm hallucinating?"

"Olivia, listen to me," he said in a calming tone as he rubbed her back. "I am sure they were there, just not where you could see them. The way sound bounces around in that back alley, they could have been around the corner."

"Then why didn't you hear them?" she asked more calmly. Already she was relaxing. She always felt safe in his arms.

He shrugged. "I wasn't listening for them and I was in the other room."

"That's where I was when I first heard them," she reminded him.

"Olivia," he sighed patiently, "it's been proven that women hear high-pitched sounds better than men. It's like you have dog hearing or something."

She glowered at him and he smiled apologetically. "Sorry, that was a bad comparison, but you know what I mean. It's like my old alarm clock. I couldn't even hear it ticking, but it kept you up all night, remember?"

She nodded, and he continued his explanation, "Well, children's voices are high-pitched, too. It was probably just too quiet and too shrill for me to hear."

She nodded and looked sheepish. "I suppose you're right."

She didn't sound too certain, so he asked, "Do you want me to go outside and take a look around before I leave, just to be sure?"

She frowned. "No, you'll be late," she said. "And then Dani would have to hurt you. I don't know what's gotten into me, but I'll be all right. I'm sorry."

He wisely refrained from making another hormone comment. "It's ok," he assured her. "Why don't you go downstairs and set the table for breakfast? I'll finish dressing and sort the laundry, and I'll be down in a minute."

She nodded, kissed him on the temple, and wandered out of the room without a word. He went over to their bedroom and dialed his cell phone.

"Dickie, it's Dad . . . Sorry, _Rick_ . . . Look, when you come to paint the nursery, could you do me a favor? . . . Spend some extra time with Olivia. She's had a, I guess the best word for it is a weird morning . . . She's been nervous and skittish. I think she might be about to deliver . . . Because your mom acted the same way but it would be tactless for me to tell Olivia that . . . I did offer to stay home, but she told me to go to work . . . No, I can't insist . . . Because then she will want to know why, and I'll have to tell her what I think. Then she'll ask why I think that, and I'll have to tell her about your mother . . . Nah, you go to class. Mrs. Marchesi comes every day at nine, and it could actually be a couple of days before her water breaks . . . Just make sure she isn't coming unwound, that's all . . . Ok, thanks. I love you, too, Son . . . Bye."

Elliot glanced at the time as he put his watch on and realized that he had to hustle if he was going to make it to work by nine. He wished he could think of a reason to stay home, but Olivia would be pissed if she thought he had called off just because he was worried about her. He thought he'd convinced her with the explanation about the voices, but he wasn't sure he'd convinced himself. It wasn't like her to get so upset about noisy kids playing in the street, either.

He shook his head. Now she was making him jumpy. She wouldn't be alone more than thirty minutes before Ginny Marchesi got there. The older woman, a member of the church he had joined when he'd sold the house in Elmhurst and moved to Brooklyn two years ago to start a life with Olivia, was a retired nurse who lived just a few houses down the street. When Father Spencer had mentioned Olivia's pregnancy to a prayer group after the bleeding incident at the end of her first trimester, Ginny had offered to come by and check on her every day. Olivia hadn't wanted to be a burden, but Elliot was so anxious about her health that she had consented.

Ginny would check her blood pressure and temperature, ask about her other bodily functions, and do a urine test to check her sugar because, while Olivia had tested negative for gestational diabetes in her twenty-eighth week, there was still a small risk of developing it even this late in her pregnancy. Then she'd probably give Liv a manicure and a pedicure to help her remember that she was still beautiful while checking to see that her legs and feet weren't too swollen. She'd make sure Olivia had taken her vitamin pill and stay there in case she needed help with her shower, and by that time, Dickie would probably have arrived. Ginny would call him if she noticed anything wrong, and Dickie would hang around most of the afternoon hoping to be invited to dinner.

If Elliot had to work late on a case, he would call one of his girls, and she would contact the others. Between the three of them, they would work out a plan so that someone was calling to check on Liv every hour until bedtime. If he was still at work then, one of them would most likely come over to spend the night.

Elliot laughed. Liv had never been one to let others coddle her, but she was over forty, it was her first pregnancy, she was having twins, and she'd had minor complications early on. He wasn't going to take any chances with her or the babies' health. If he could have afforded it, he'd have hired a live-in OB/GYN. He had been sure the fuss would drive his wife nuts, but she surprised him by accepting it without argument. Concerned, that she might be even more worried than he was, he had asked her why she had given in so easily.

She had smiled and told him, "Because it's the first time in my life that anyone has ever made me feel precious, and I like it."

Elliot swallowed hard as the memory made him choke up. Every day since then, he had tried hard to make her feel that way, because she was precious to him, and she deserved to know it.

Looking at his watch again, he cursed and rushed out of the bedroom.


	3. The Road to Here

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter ThreeThe Road to Here**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
8:07 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia sighed as she looked into the refrigerator. Pickings were becoming mighty slim, and Elliot was going to have to make a serious grocery run tomorrow whether he liked it or not. They were out of cereal, bananas, and orange juice, and what was left of the strawberries they had put on their cereal two days ago were hairy now. There were two crisp, green, Granny Smith apples, however, and with a little dab of peanut butter, some toasted seven grain bread with cream cheese, and a big glass of milk, they would make quite a satisfactory breakfast.

She hummed softly to herself as she started the coffee for Elliot, dropped the bread into the toaster, and put the kettle on to make Postum for herself since she'd had to give up caffeine for the duration of her pregnancy. Then she cored the apples and cut them each into eight wedges. Taking two plates out of the cupboard, she arranged the apple wedges into semi circles and placed a dollop of peanut butter inside of each curve. The toast popped, and she smeared it with cream cheese and a little strawberry jam. She was just sniffing the milk to make sure it wasn't sour when she heard Elliot plunking out a minor-key melody on the piano in the family room.

"You don't have time to play the piano, Honey!" she called as she set the milk carton and two glasses on the table. Sometimes it surprised her how much he behaved like a kid. Here she was, trying to get him off to work on time, and he was goofing around at the piano.

"Elliot, let's go!" she called.

Years ago, he had invited her to mass with him and she had been quite surprised when the priest had called him up to play a special piece for the music ministry during the service. As she watched, the worries and cares had fallen away, his eyes had slid shut, and an expression of rapture had overtaken his face. Since then, he had played for her many times, and she never tired of watching and listening, but right now was just a really bad time. Besides, the tune was creepy.

"Elliot!" she shouted in frustration. He was a damned good cop, the best she had ever known, but in his private life, sometimes he just didn't have any sense.

"What?" he called as his footsteps began thumping down the stairs.

She moved to the foot of the stairs and frowned up at him. Then she poked her head around the corner into the family room. Finally she stared thoughtfully at the floor and shook her head.

"Olivia, what do you want?" he asked, a bit agitated because of the tone she had used when she called him.

"N-nothing, I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you were in the other room, but I can see I was mistaken."

"Are you all right?" He pressed the back of his hand to her face as if to check for a fever, but she jerked away.

"No, I'm half left," she snapped, feeling unreasonably irritable all of a sudden.

"Olivia," he said in exasperation, "do I need to stay home today?"

She looked at him and made an 'are you kidding me' face. "No! I'm fine, really. Now eat your breakfast."

He didn't believe her, but with no real evidence to the contrary, he didn't think he should insist. Besides, she was close enough to her due date that they were past the worry of one or both of the babies being premature, and even if she did go into labor sometime today, she would call Ginny Marchesi first if he was away. Ginny would call him and get Liv to the hospital where he would meet them, and it could very likely be tomorrow before the twins were born.

"What, no cereal?" he asked when he saw the table.

"We're out of almost everything," she informed him. "You _have _to get groceries tomorrow."

He sighed as he took his seat. "Ok, make me a list."

"You'll have it tonight," she promised. "Now eat, you don't have time to wait for me."

As he began his breakfast, she poured his coffee and put a teaspoon of Postum into a cup for herself. Pouring boiling water over it, she savored the fragrance as she stirred it up. It wasn't coffee, but with a little milk and honey, it wasn't a bad way to start the day. Then she sat down to watch her husband enjoying his meal while she waited for her drink to cool off.

Shortly after she and Elliot had gotten together, she had discovered that she didn't mind preparing meals when there was someone around to appreciate the effort. Even when it was inedible, as some of her first attempts at fixing a full, home style meal for him and his kids had been, he had at least appreciated her effort and tried gamely to choke down the burnt potatoes and the pot roast that looked beautiful on the outside but was still refrigerator cold on the inside. The kids hadn't been quite so generous, but at least they were polite. Elliot never criticized or complained about her cooking, and whenever she tried to apologize for a dish gone wrong, he would shrug it off and tell her it wasn't easy to go from cooking for one to cooking for a small army.

With his help, some of the Stabler family favorite recipes collected for her by Maureen and Kathleen, and a lot of patience, she had learned to time a meal so everything was ready at once. She would never start a catering business, but she had thrown more than a few very successful dinner parties for their friends over the past couple of years.

As he took a bite of his toast, Elliot noticed a spark in Olivia's eye, and he just had to know what put it there.

"What?"

She grinned. "I was just thinking."

"Uh-ohhh . . . OW!" He rubbed his shin where she had kicked him under the table for his wisecrack. "Ok, what's on your mind?"

"Do you ever think about how we got here?" she asked.

He was going to say something about Second Avenue down to Houston Street, and then taking the Manhattan Bridge over the East River, and it was a straight shot down Flatbush Avenue; but he decided he didn't need another bruise.

He shrugged instead and said, "What's to think about? You left, you came back, I decided I'd sooner die than lose you again, I asked you to marry me, and in a spectacular display of bad judgment, you said yes. What _were_ you thinking?"

"I was thinking about the first time we made love," she said.

"Oh. Not one of my . . . manlier moments," he said, sounding chagrinned.

"Being macho has its place, Elliot, but that night will always be one of my most beautiful memories precisely because you _finally_ let your guard down."

_Olivia groaned and opened another box. It was a cold, rainy November night and while that didn't make unpacking any more fun, at least she wasn't tempted to blow off the chore and go out yet again. She'd missed the city while she was away, and had spent a lot of time since her return playing tourist and seeing the sights that she had always taken for granted her entire life._

_When she'd agreed to go undercover for the FBI, she'd had to give up her apartment, her past, her entire life, and the feds had put everything into storage for her. When she finally came home, she'd quickly found a new apartment not far from her old place, and Star had sent some agents over to deliver her stuff. One of them had kindly assembled her bed for her, but then she'd been left to fend for herself._

_A clap of thunder made her jump as she carried the box containing her dishes into the kitchen to unpack them directly into the dishwasher. She breathed a sigh of relief when she got the heavy carton safely onto the counter. Although everything had been neatly stored away, none of it had been labeled, and she'd had to search through every box to find anything. She had lived like that for two weeks as she had gotten settled back into the SVU and completed the paperwork that would make her reassignment back to the NYPD official. She was just starting to think she would go mad from living out of cardboard boxes when life started getting back to normal, and she suddenly had time to finish unpacking._

_Normal. It wasn't what it used to be. Now she worked with Munch and Fin as often as she did her own partner, and when she was with Elliot, he barely spoke to her. She wouldn't have blamed him for being pissed off. Disappearing without so much as a word goodbye was a lousy way to treat your best friend. But this was different. Her professional observations were noted with cool detachment, her jokes were met with stony silence. He'd put up a wall between them, and he wasn't going to let her past it. She hadn't pissed him off, she'd lost his trust._

_The sob that bubbled up in her throat caught her totally off guard. She looked around knowing that she had Kleenex in some damned box, but it would take forever to find them. Giving up before she started, she ran to the bathroom and grabbed a roll of tissue. Returning to the living room, she curled up on the sofa with a soft pillow and tried like hell to get her emotions under control. If she had known coming back would hurt this much, she never would have left._

_She must have cried herself to sleep, because the next thing she knew, the buzzing of the intercom woke her up. She walked over to the noisy box on the wall and took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself before she answered. Pressing the button, she said, "Hello?"_

"_Olivia, it's Elliot. Please let me in. We need to talk." She could hear the patter of the rain behind his voice. The storm wasn't letting up._

_Her blood was singing in her veins. She didn't know whether to be excited or afraid because she couldn't tell from his voice whether he was there to bury the hatchet or to tell her he couldn't stand to work with her anymore. Not trusting her voice, she buzzed him in without a word._

_She dried her eyes, blew her nose, and ran to the bathroom to touch up her hair and makeup. She didn't know why she cared how she looked. It had never seemed to matter to Elliot except as an indication of whether she was taking care of herself. There was a knock at the door. She put her eyeliner down and tried to smile at herself in the mirror, but she was so afraid that he was here to say goodbye that she couldn't even fake it. There was another knock. She took a deep breath, walked resolutely to the door, and opened it._

_His short, dark hair was plastered to his head with rainwater, a different, but not unattractive look for him. The collar and shoulders of his coat were dark with dampness, as were his shoes and the cuffs of his jeans, but the droplets on his cheeks had nothing to do with the rain._

_They lingered in the doorway for a long moment locked in an odd sort of standoff. Neither of them was being deliberately stubborn or trying to force the other to make the next move. They were both just unable to act, so paralyzed with emotion, so afraid that anything they said or did would be the wrong thing, that they could do nothing at all. _

_Finally, Elliot broke the spell. "Hi."_

_She tried a tentative smile, and her face seemed to respond appropriately. "Hi."_

_He leaned a little to the side, looking into the apartment, and asked, "Can I come in?"_

_She stood aside to let him pass._

_He went into the living room and looked around. "Nice place," he said. "Do you need some help unpacking?"_

_Now she was beginning to feel awkward. "Look, Elliot . . ."_

_He wheeled to face her and asked, "Do you have any idea what it did to me to come back to work and find you gone?"_

_She choked back a sob and blinked her eyes against the sting of tears. "I'm sorry," she barely managed to whisper._

"_I know, but do you understand how much that hurt?" he asked, his eyes glittering with tears he refused to shed._

_The pain in his voice was tearing her apart. If he had been angry, she could have been compassionate, sympathetic, contrite, but he was just hurt and that devastated her._

"_I didn't mean to," she said as her tears spilled over. "I'm so sorry, El, but there was no other way."_

"_Dammit!" he cursed softly, and suddenly he was weeping openly as well. Taking her hands, he guided her over to the couch and sat down facing her. "You were always there for me, Liv, but then when I needed you the most, you were gone. Twice."_

_He choked on his words and had to pause just to breathe. He stared at a spot on couch and, because it was easier than meeting her eyes, he did not look up when he resumed speaking._

"_I thought I would be safe if I didn't let myself need you anymore. I figured if I acted like I didn't care, sooner or later, I wouldn't, but it didn't work that way." _

_He sniffled, looked up at the ceiling, down at the carpet, at a crystal figurine on a shelf in the corner, everywhere except at her._

"_I can't help myself, Liv, you matter too much to me. I can't make myself stop caring about you, so I came here to tell you that we couldn't work together anymore. I wanted to say that if you didn't leave the squad permanently, I would."_

"_But, Elliot . . ."_

"_Sh, sh, sh, sh, shhhh," he covered her mouth gently with the tips of his fingers. "I can't do that either, Liv. So, I need you to promise me that you won't ever go away again. Please, Olivia, promise me."_

_She reached up and removed his fingers from her lips. When they curled around hers, she kissed the back of them and then wrapped her other hand around his and drew it to her heart._

"_Oh, Elliot," she said softly, "I never meant to hurt you."_

"_I know that," he said, "but please, Olivia, promise you won't leave me again."_

_She reached up to brush the tears from his face and then let her hands slip down his neck to rest on his broad shoulders. She was reluctant to make a promise she might not be able to keep. As she gazed into his dark blue eyes, she wondered if the affair he'd had with Dani Beck was the thing that had finally made him sign the divorce papers. She wondered whether he would still be legally married if she had stayed. She wondered if having her to talk to might have helped him to figure out a way to save his marriage. She wondered if they'd be friends now if she hadn't gone._

"_Olivia."_

_The way he said her name that last time was what finally got her. He wasn't speaking as a guy who had missed his best friend during her absence or as a cop who trusted only his partner to watch his back. He'd said her name as a man who needed her as a woman._

_She leaned toward him and with her hands still on his shoulders, pulled him gently toward her until they were so close they were breathing each other's air. Their noses rubbed together and she could feel the moist heat of his breath on her face. His eyes were hooded and his lips were slightly parted, and she could tell he was as intoxicated by the moment as she was._

"_I promise," she breathed into his mouth, and then she closed her eyes as they shared their very first kiss._

_They had moved slowly after that, exploring each other's bodies and learning how to please one another, and when the first watery light of dawn pried its way through the blinds, it found the two of them spooned together in her bed._

"You know, I had my finger on the buzzer to your building, and I walked away, at first," Elliot said her.

"I know," she replied. "I remember you telling me."

_She awoke to find him trembling in her arms. She liked to keep the bedroom cool so she could snuggle under the covers, and thought maybe he was cold. She tried to roll away, planning to get up and get an extra blanket, but held onto her arms where they were wrapped around his chest._

"_Don't let go," he pleaded._

_She heard a sniffle and suddenly knew he wasn't trembling with cold. _

"_Elliot, what's wrong?"_

"_I walked away, Liv," he whispered, and she had to lean close to hear. "I had my finger on your buzzer and I walked away. I went back to my car and put the key in the ignition. I had my engine started and put it in gear, but I couldn't pull out into traffic. I couldn't drive off again without talking to you, so I killed the engine and came running back."_

_Again._ _She wondered how many nights he'd spent sitting out there in the cold, too proud or too afraid to come in and talk to her. And tonight he came running back. The image of him sprinting through the rain, desperate to see her, filled her with so much emotion she had to open her mouth to breathe._

"_But you're here now, El, it's ok," she assured him as she gently rubbed the spot on his ribs where her right hand rested._

"_But what if I had left? What if I had driven off? How could I have lived the rest of my life never having felt this way? How could I have lived this long never knowing how this felt?"_

_He sounded a little hysterical, and that frightened her. What he said didn't make any sense. He was no virgin; he couldn't be talking about sex. So, what else could he mean? "Elliot, I don't understand, how do you feel?"_

_He turned in her embrace so that he could face her._

"_You're the only person who has ever accepted me just the way I am, Liv," he tried to explain. "You overlook all my faults and make up for them just by being you. You know me better than anyone and to find out you can love me anyway . . ."_

_He shrugged in her arms and said, "I don't have a word for it, Olivia." _

_He reached a hand up and traced the contours of her face. After a minute or so, he said, "Perfected comes close. Maybe absolved? All my life, I've felt like I had to work for it, like I had to say something or do something or change something about myself to earn it but with you . . ."_

_He paused again, struggling to find the words. His tears had abated as he was speaking, and she gently wiped them off his face. _

"_You know me better than anyone, Liv, and yet you've never asked me to do anything differently or to change myself. With you, I feel like I already deserve it."_

"_Wait, Elliot, I'm still confused," she said. "Deserve what?"_

"_To be loved."_

_He held her gaze for only a moment, then he glanced down as if he was too ashamed to look her in the eye any longer._

_Now it was Olivia who didn't have the words to say what she felt. Frantically she kissed him on his face, neck, shoulders and chest, anywhere her lips could touch him without releasing him from her embrace. Then she hugged him to her as tightly as she could._

"_Elliot, you listen to me," she whispered into his ear, desperate to give him something he seemed to have been missing all his life. "You do deserve to be loved. You deserve someone who loves you more than her next breath, more than her own heartbeat, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just a fool. Do you understand that?"_

_When he was silent for too long, she became insistent. "Elliot, tell me you understand that."_

_He looked up at her through his long eyelashes and nodded slightly. "If you say so."_

_It wasn't the brash confidence she was used to seeing from him, but it was a start._

"Of course, getting from there to here was a lot harder than I expected it to be," Olivia told him. She took a sip of her drink and made a face because she had forgotten to sweeten it.

As she drizzled about a teaspoon of honey into her cup, she said, "I had no idea what a Catholic had to go through to remarry with the blessing of the Church, and to find out that the Church could refuse to grant an annulment . . . Elliot, it was awful."

It had taken the church tribunal almost two years, during which time Elliot and Olivia had been required to abstain from intimate relations, to decide that Elliot and Kathy's marriage had never been a real union in the Catholic sense. While she waited for the decision of the tribunal, Olivia learned that the Church only granted annulment if the marriage met one or more of three specific criteria. She felt like a hypocrite, but for two years, Liv had prayed that the tribunal would accept that Elliot and Kathy's wedding had been sham in the eyes of the Church.

When the wedding ceremony failed to meet the requirements to make it binding under Canon law, it was considered never to have taken place. Olivia didn't understand what those requirements were, but she knew that wasn't the problem in Elliot's case. An annulment could also be granted when there was an impediment to the marriage such as a prior marriage, vows to the church, or some other commitment which would leave the individual unable to fulfill the responsibilities of a husband or wife. Elliot was only nineteen when he married Kathy. He hadn't had time to make any other commitments of such magnitude. That left the possibility that one or both of the parties to the marriage was unable to freely consent to be married because they were a minor, they were being coerced, they were mentally incompetent, or for some other reason they lacked the capacity to consent.

To prove that he had been incapable of freely consenting, Elliot had been forced to admit to members of his own parish that Maureen was conceived out of wedlock and that he had married Kathy because he was afraid of what his abusive father would do to him if he fathered an illegitimate child. He'd had to track down childhood friends and get them to testify that he'd had plans for college and didn't want to get married at the time. Then, the hardest part of all, he had to explain it to his kids. As much as she had suffered during the two years they had waited for the decree of annulment, Olivia had hurt even more for Elliot as she watched him struggle through the whole, painful process. What amazed her most of all was how philosophical he was about it afterward.

"It's supposed to be awful," he told her. "The Sacrament of Marriage is forever. The man and his wife become one soul. To say after twenty years and four kids that it never really happened . . . Well, it's not something to be taken lightly. I'm just grateful that you were patient with the whole process. That's how I knew I was doing the right thing."

"Really? You never told me that."

He nodded. "You've always accepted me on my terms, Liv," he said. "You don't share my faith, but you've always supported me in it. The fact that you never asked me what I'd do if they didn't grant the annulment meant a lot."

"Well, I'm glad we never had to find out," she told him. "I have a feeling we wouldn't be here now if that had happened."

"I'm not so sure about that," he said.

"I am," she answered. "I know what your faith means to you, Elliot. I would never dream of making you choose between me and the Church, and I wouldn't have let you choose me, because I'm not capable of filling all the holes that abandoning your faith would have left in your life."

He cleared his throat. "Then let's thank God that didn't happen."

Wanting to lighten the mood, she smiled at him and said, "At least pre-Cana classes were a cake walk."

He grinned. "By that time we'd been together long enough to know all the answers."

Olivia giggled. "Jim and Ellen didn't know what to think of us."

Elliot shook his head and laughed with her. "They still don't."

Jim and Ellen McLaren had been the leaders of their pre-Cana class, assigned by the Church to prepare them and five other couples for the Sacrament of Marriage. They were deeply devout Catholics and had been married for eleven years. Of the twelve individuals in the group, Elliot and Olivia were the oldest by some fifteen years. Olivia was the only 'nonbeliever' in the class. Elliot's marriage to Kathy had lasted six years longer than the McLaren's had known each other. The absurdity of them counseling Elliot and Olivia about relationships was lost on no one, and despite the fact that his first marriage had failed, younger members of the group sometimes asked Elliot's advice about various issues in the parking lot after class.

"Just wait until the twins are baptized!" Olivia said with an inelegant snort. "Jim will blow a gasket."

"Why? They each have _one_ Catholic godparent," Elliot reminded her, "that's all the Church requires."

"Yeah, but Alex is Presbyterian, Munch is Jewish, and Fin is . . . whatever he is."

Casey would be Casey Danielle's godmother. Cragen would be Alexandra Serena's godfather. Munch, Fin, and Alex Cabot, who had returned from the witness protection program after the drug kingpin who had ordered a hit on her was killed, would be witnesses for both girls.

"AME, I think," Elliot said, "but I'm more concerned that our children are surrounded with good people who love them than with what religion those people practice. Jim's problem is that he thinks there is only one right answer and the Catholic Church has found it."

During the pre-Cana classes, Jim had frequently pushed Olivia to convert to Catholicism hoping that she would buckle under the peer pressure, but Elliot had confounded him every time saying that her religious beliefs didn't matter to him. When asked how he could trust her to raise any children they might have in the Catholic faith, he'd looked Jim in the eye and said, "The same way you can trust Ellen. She's already made that promise to me, and she'll make it to God at our wedding."

"How can you be so sure he's wrong?" Olivia asked, genuinely wondering what he would say.

"Because I have you," he told her, "and nothing this good can be bad." He kissed her on the forehead and then crossed the kitchen to put his dishes in the dishwasher. Frowning when he saw how overloaded it was, he said, "If you run the dishwasher today, I'll unload it when I get home."

She laughed. "I've heard that before."

"Ok, ok, I'll try to remember to unload it when I get home," he corrected himself. He lightly massaged her shoulders and neck and said, "Last chance. I can call in sick if you want me to stay home today."

"No way, mister!" she objected. "You're going to need your sick days to look after me once the babies are born, and after that, well, when they start running fevers and throwing up, I expect you to help take care them. I've done all the hard work so far, but once they're on the outside, you're gonna pitch in."

"That's fine with me," he said as he leaned over to kiss her cheek, "but if you decide you don't want to be a full-time home maker, you have to tell me, Liv. I want to make you just as happy as you have made me, so whatever you want, we'll find a way to make it work."

She reached up to grasp one of his hands where it rested on her shoulder and pulled it down close to her heart. "My mom never had a choice, El, she had to work to support us, but if she'd been able to, I think she would have worked even longer hours just to avoid the sight of me."

"Olivia . . ."

She shook her head. "No, it's all right." She pulled his hand down even further to where it rested on her protruding stomach. "Our girls were conceived in love, they'll be born into love, and I can't imagine a better way to spend my days than in watching our love grow."

"Ok, but if you change your mind, you'll let me know, right?"

"Of course I will," she agreed, "and the same goes for you. You have more than twenty years in on the force, and you don't have to be the sole provider for this family. If you want to retire so you have more time at home, say so. I can go back to work if we need more than your pension provides."

He wrapped his arms around her neck in a gentle embrace and said, "You know, I think we're gonna do all right, despite Jim McLaren's concerns."

She kissed his forearm and then, glimpsing his watch, she turned his wrist so she could see the time.

"Yeah, we'll be fine assuming Beck doesn't kill you," Liv said. "It's half past eight. You have to leave now!"


	4. Tick Tock

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Four  
Tick-Tock**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
8:35 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

After she waved Elliot off to work, Olivia wandered back into the house to finish what she could of her breakfast. She hadn't suffered with morning sickness at all during her pregnancy, which she considered a minor miracle, but as the babies had grown, they had compressed her organs to the point where she almost always felt full, bloated, constipated, and short of breath. She hadn't eaten an entire meal in a couple of weeks, but she managed to satisfy her caloric needs by grazing throughout the day.

She laughed at the thought. Cows grazed. Lately she felt like a cow.

And a blob.

And a whale.

And a . . . hippo?

Who was she kidding? She was as big as a house!

She happily rubbed her bulging stomach and smiled when she felt baby Alexandra wiggle closer to the pressure of her hand. All her life, she had wanted to be a mother, to raise a happy family, to love a child like her own mother had never been able to love her; but she'd always been afraid. How could someone who'd never known what it meant to be treasured as part of a family ever give a child what it needed to grow up healthy and happy? She had been a wreck when she first found out she was pregnant, but Elliot had given her the courage to face motherhood and the confidence to believe she would do a good job. He was the one who had convinced her that she would be a great mom because she still remembered all the things that had been lacking in her own childhood.

"I sure hope Daddy gets to work on time," she said, caressing her abdomen with both hands now. "If he's late again Dani is going to be really mad."

As if she knew what Olivia was talking about, baby Casey responded with a punch, or a kick, or a knee, Olivia wasn't sure which.

She ate the last of her toast, but put the apple in the refrigerator for later. It would brown a little, but it would still taste fine in an hour or so. Her cup and the small plate she had put her toast on went into the top rack of the dishwasher, and she carefully aimed and dropped her spoon into the basket on the second rack. As big as she was now, bending over was uncomfortable, and Elliot was absolutely paranoid that there would be further complications if she tried to do too much; but she had always been good at the drop-the- clothespin-in-a-milk-bottle game they had played when her mother used to send her to summer day camp. So, there was nothing stopping her from putting her silverware in the dishwasher.

She waddled more than wandered into the family room and let her fingers plunk out a few notes on the keyboard of the old upright piano Elliot had brought from the house in Queens. It was a beautiful instrument, over a hundred years old. His grandmother had learned to play on it as a child as had his mother, Elliot himself, and Elizabeth. It was one of the few heirlooms from his family he had seen fit to keep for his children. Most of his parents' things, he had once explained to Olivia, brought back too many bad memories.

Choosing instead to think of happier things, Liv picked up the scrapbook that sat on top of the piano. His kids had given it to them last year for their first wedding anniversary, and it had contained photos and messages from each of the children commemorating their first year as a family. It was a rich wine color that had been stamped in gold ink with pictures representing various events detailed inside the book. Each of the kids had made five pages for the book, two for holidays, two of their own special events, and one of a special memory they had of Liv and Elliot.

Maureen had assembled all of the pages in chronological order. The wedding had been on the Saturday between Christmas and New Years, so the first page in the book featured a snapshot Maureen had taken of them kissing under the mistletoe at midnight on New Years Eve. The picture was bordered with holiday stamps of snowflakes, holly, mistletoe, snowmen, poinsettias, clocks striking midnight, champagne bottles and glasses, and in the corner, an old man representing the old year walking off the page as a baby for the new year sat playing with confetti. At the top it said _The _in tiny letters on a line by itself, then _Happy New Year _in type about one-half inch tall, and at the bottom, in large letters was the word _SMOOCH!_ It was an extra special memory for Olivia because, except for her wedding day, she had always felt awkward expressing her affection for Elliot when his kids were around, but, as if to prove a point, they had been the ones to maneuver their dad and her into position at midnight.

The next page commemorated the twins' birthday. She smiled as she realized that soon, certainly before Thanksgiving, they would have to specify which set of twins they meant when they said 'the twins.'

There were three small shots of the party, one of the kids cutting their cake, one of them opening gifts, and one showing them having a good time with all of their friends; and the borders were decorated with hand-drawn party hats and confetti. It had been the first birthday they had celebrated in Brooklyn. Olivia had baked and decorated the cake herself, and was quite proud of the results. It had taken her several tries to write _Happy Birthday Liz & Rich_, in icing, but Elliot hadn't minded eating the mistakes she'd scraped off the top. They'd bought two cartons of Neapolitan ice cream and Elliot had grilled burgers and hot dogs for all of the guests.

The kids had invited Olivia to be part of their family portrait at Easter, and that page was decorated with eggs, bunnies, chicks, and baskets. The twins had each done a page on their prom, and _Rich_, for that is what he had chosen to go by for a couple of years on his way to becoming Rick, had included his boutonnière and a special note thanking her for her help with his bow tie.

Kathleen had made a page for her athletic banquet when she was named MVP for the Hudson University women's soccer team and was voted All-State goalie of the year for her division. She'd used her two guest invitations for her mom and dad, but she'd come by that night to show Liv her trophies.

Someone had gotten a great candid shot of Elliot and her having a water gun fight at their Independence Day cookout. She was wearing a read and white striped halter top and dark blue cutoff shorts. Elliot had a ridiculous red and white striped Dr. Seuss hat on his head, a navy blue polo shirt, and jeans, and from the amount of water dripping off his hat, he appeared to be losing.

At the Halloween block party, they'd made a very convincing Gomez and Morticia Addams with Rich and Liz tagging along as Wednesday and Pugsley. Maureen, who had been two months pregnant at the time and wasn't showing yet, had been dressed as Cat Woman, which had scandalized Elliot in more ways than he could count. He'd only stopped fretting about it when Olivia pointed out that at least she had opted for the Eartha Kitt/Julie Newmar-style black body suit instead of the Halle Barry bikini top and cut out trousers. To go with his wife's costume, Jim had worked up the nerve to wear Adam West-style Batman tights with a cape and a cowl. Kathleen had dressed as the Cowardly Lion from _The Wizard of Oz, _but the twins had razzed her all evening that, because of the way she had teased her hair to make her mane, she would have made a more convincing Grandmamma Addams.

There was a page from the baby shower Olivia had thrown for Maureen, one for Kathleen's sorority formal, and one from each of the twins for their school's fundraising carnival. Elliot had volunteered to sit in the dunking booth, and Rich had dunked him three times on three throws, showing the world why he was a starting pitcher on the school's baseball team. Elizabeth had used a picture of Olivia handing a goldfish in a bag over to a small child at the ping-pong ball toss.

There was a page for every holiday and special event in the first year they had spent together, but the one Olivia treasured most, the one that brought her to tears even without the hormones of pregnancy, was from the second Sunday in May. All of the kids had contributed to the Mother's Day page. In one picture, she was building a sand castle with Elizabeth at the beach. In another, she was helping Rick hang curtains in his dorm room. A third showed Maureen teaching her to make Christmas cookies, and in the fourth, she and Kathleen were just sitting on the porch swing, surrounded by blooming geraniums and petunias, giggling and enjoying some girl talk, neither of them aware that someone was taking their picture. The kids had each written one line of the message at the bottom of the page:

_You never tried to be our mom,  
But you always managed to be our friend;  
And somewhere along the way,  
You became so much more._

_Love,  
Maureen, Kathleen, Elizabeth, & Rich_

Getting all misty, Olivia closed the book and curled up on the couch. She hadn't suffered from morning sickness like Maureen had, but she'd been exhausted practically since the moment the twins were conceived. She could hear birds twittering outside and squirrels chattering, and on the shelf above the sofa, the anniversary clock the kids had given them along with the scrapbook ticked quietly. Its soft monotonous _tick, tick, tick_ gently lulled her to sleep unlike the rapid _tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick_ of Elliot's old alarm clock which had set her heart racing, put her nerves on edge, and kept her up all night until they moved it to what would be the guest room when they finished decorating it.

She smiled as she dozed off, remembering when the kids had presented the gifts how Kathleen had explained that her dad was a traditional guy and she was a modern woman, so they decided to go with both the traditional and modern gifts. Then Elizabeth had spoiled the sentiment by confessing that they had voted and tied at two for each and were hopelessly deadlocked for a month before they decided to get both gifts.

The squirrels chattered outside, the birds chirped, and the clock continued its ticking on the shelf, and in moments, Olivia was sound asleep.

_She woke and stretched and wondered why it was so dark. How in the hell had she managed to sleep through the whole day? She should have at least had to get up to pee. And why was the clock ticking so damned loud? It was like it was inside her head. Suddenly she realized she wasn't in her house anymore. She wasn't sitting on her comfortable sofa in the family room, but on a hard wooden bench. _

_She was in some kind of cell, but not a regular holding cell. It was like a basement or a dungeon. The floor was heaped with straw, there were chains bolted to the wall, and she could hear small creatures making their small noises in the darkness. She wasn't afraid of rats and mice, but she didn't want them running across her feet either, so she pulled her legs up on the bench. She looked down and was surprised to discover the bench was actually stone. How had she mistaken it for wood?_

_Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty and the clock was still inside her head with its incessant tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick; and there were other noises, cracks and crunches, like an animal gnawing on bones, and more clocks, soft at first but getting louder, so loud it hurt, so loud she could barely hear._

_It was pitch black, but she couldn't remember when it had gotten that way. Surely there had been light at some point, else how would she have seen the chains and the straw and the wooden bench that was stone the next time she looked? There were splashes of light here and there, lasting but a moment, illuminating faces, clock faces, one by one, a time clock waiting for someone to punch in, an old fashioned brass alarm clock with the bells and striker on top, a pocket watch, a cuckoo clock, a ferocious looking dog gnawing on bloody bones that wasn't a clock at all, a tall grandfather's clock with the weights that moved up and down with the time, one of those creepy grinning cat clocks with the eyes that rolled and the tail that swung every second. They were ticking louder and faster and faster and louder and her heart was pounding and her limbs were trembling and she couldn't breathe and they all chimed and cuckooed and rang and buzzed at once and she screamed and she screamed and she screamed and she screamed and she screamed._

_And then it was dead silent._

_All the flashes of light consolidated on one lone figure in a hooded black robe. Its head was turned down so the hood completely concealed its face. It called her name in a dry, whispery voice._

"_Olivia . . ."_

_On shaky legs she walked toward it. When she stood directly in front of it, it lifted its head. She gasped to see a pale, white, matte-finished porcelain mask where the face should have been. She reached up with cold, trembling fingers to pull the mask away._

_There was nothing behind it._

_Nothing at all, just empty, black space._

"_Oliviaaaa!" the blackness moaned, calling her into it._

_She screamed, and it howled and moaned and shrieked her name, "Oliviaaaa," and it reached out with bony claw-like hands and shook her and shouted her name again and again, "Oliviaaaa! Oliviaaaa!"_

"Olivia!"

Her eyes popped open, and she gasped in surprise.

"Ginny! Oh, my . . . I . . . ." She couldn't begin to describe what she'd just seen, and she was so overcome with fear that she burst into tears.

Ginny Marchesi sat on the sofa beside her and placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. Rocking her gently, the older woman reassured her, "There, there now, it was just a bad dream, Liv, that's all it was, just a bad dream. Shhh. It's all right, Sweeite, it was just a bad dream."

It was several minutes before she stopped trembling and got her tears under control, but Ginny waited patiently. When she judged that Olivia was all right to sit by herself for a few moments, she pulled the throw from the back of the couch to drape around her and then said, "Why don't I fix you a nice hot cup of that nasty Postum drink you're so fond of? Would that make you feel a little better?"

Olivia sniffled and said faintly, "Yes, please, and thank you."

When Ginny returned with the drink, she found Olivia clutching the blanket tightly around herself and staring warily at the clock on the shelf above the couch.


	5. Keeping Busy

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Five  
Keeping Busy**_

_16th Precinct  
Special Victims Unit  
9:12 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Don't even bother," Dani said, clapping Elliot on the shoulder as he arrived in the squad room and went to the coat rack to remove his jacket. "We gotta roll."

He redid the top two buttons as he followed her out the door. "What's up?"

"Julianne Beiber, our vic from yesterday, just woke up and the doctors say she's fit to talk to us."

"Just the way I like to start the day," he told her.

"Hey, if you want coffee and a bagel, maybe you should try getting here on time," Dani snapped, obviously irritated with her partner's tardiness.

"Actually, I was talking about hearing that a victim was bouncing back, at least physically," he explained. "And there's always a chance she'll be able to give us a lead, too, you know."

"Oh, well, anyway, you know you're in for an ass chewing if anyone complains to the captain, right?" she reminded him, stepping into the elevator as it reached their floor and disgorged a few people who were even later to work that Elliot had been.

The doors shut behind them giving them some privacy, and Dani continued talking. "I mean it's one thing for volunteers to cover your on-call shifts, but to some people, this coming in late half the time could look like you're taking advantage of him or like he's playing favorites."

Looking at her through narrowed eyes, he said, "Yeah, I suppose 'some people' might see it that way."

"Give me a break, Elliot! I'm just trying to give you a heads up here," Dani said disgustedly.

The sedan was parked near the building, and she continued her rant as they walked out to it and climbed in. "If _I_ felt that way, I wouldn't cover your ass when CSU or the ME call after working all night to get you their findings first thing in the morning or when Novak shows up at quarter after nine wanting files you're supposed to be there to give to her!"

The tires squealed a bit as she pulled out into traffic and Elliot wished he hadn't pissed her off when she was driving.

"I'm happy for you and I'll do what I can to lighten your load so you can spend more time with Olivia and the kids when they come," she said, "but there's some younger detectives in the squad that can't appreciate the extra leeway having twenty-plus years on the force buys you. If one of them makes a complaint, Cragen's gonna have to come down on you, like it or not."

He ducked his head contritely and conceded her point. "I know, and I'm sorry," he said.

"It isn't me you should be apologizing to," she reminded him. "Cragen's the one you're putting in a bad position."

There was no disputing that. "It's just, she's due to deliver any day now, and I want to spend as much time as I can with her," he tried to explain. "I'm really looking forward to becoming a father again, but once the twins are here, things will never be the same."

"So take some time off to be with her now," his partner suggested, signaling and shifting briskly into the left lane behind a black Honda to pass a slower-moving SUV.

"I offered to call in sick this morning," he told her, "but Olivia said no."

Dani made a derisive sound. "You _offered_, huh?"

"Yeah, why?" He didn't like hearing the defensive tone in his voice, but he couldn't help it. Dani had a knack for making him feel like an idiot, usually when he was being one.

"You _offered_ to stay home and hang out with the fat old cow even though you have so many _much_ better things to do with your time," his partner said sarcastically as she moved over to the right lane, passed the Honda and then shifted back into the left lane and gunned it to get through the light ahead of a delivery van before the street narrowed to one lane in each direction. "I can't imagine _why_ that didn't just make her day!"

"It wasn't like that," he insisted. He hated Dani's driving. She was so damned impatient and couldn't stand to have anything in front of her. Last month, they'd had to drive upstate to interview an inmate at Gouverneur State Correctional Facility about a suspect in a string of rape/robbery break ins, and they were less than a mile out of the city when he made her pull over so he could drive because she was making him carsick.

"Let's see. She feels like a whale. She's not allowed to work, so she's stuck at home all day, and she can't do the shopping or laundry, push the vacuum cleaner or load the dishwasher by herself," Dani said, taking a left turn so fast Elliot instinctively held on to the handle on the door.

"She couldn't help you in the yard all summer, she couldn't rake leaves this fall, and forget about decorating the nursery herself. She already feels like a burden, Elliot. By _offering_ to stay home, you made it sound like you were doing her _yet another_ favor."

He sighed in defeat. He'd honestly had no idea he had screwed up so badly. "How do I fix it?"

"Ask her _permission_ to stay home," Dani advised as the car jerked to a stop in the hospital parking lot. "Make her believe that it's something you want to do for yourself. Make her feel like _she's_ doing _you_ a favor, and I guarantee you'll get a different response."

He breathed a sigh of relief when she cut the engine and said, "Thanks for the advice. I'll try that."

She peered at him in concern. "Are you all right? You look a little pale."

He reached out his hand and said, "Give me the damned keys."

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
9:31 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Are you finished with that, Honey?" Ginny Marchesi asked after she finished vacuuming the down stairs.

"Yes, thank you," Olivia said softly as she handed her empty mug to the older woman.

Ginny was sixty-eight and just recently retired. She had a slew of grandchildren, but she could have easily lied and convinced people she was ten years younger. She bustled around with seemingly boundless energy, and she was so kind and loving that sometimes Olivia just wanted to cuddle on the couch beside her and drink hot cocoa like she had done as a child on those rare occasions when her mom was sober and felt some affection toward her.

Sitting beside Olivia on the sofa, Ginny asked, "Are you feeling better?"

"A little, thanks."

"That was some nightmare you were having," she said.

Olivia nodded.

"Can you tell me about it?"

Olivia shrugged. "It was weird," she said. "I was in a basement or a dungeon somewhere, and it was full of clocks. They kept ticking louder and faster until they all went off at once and scared me half to death. There was a growling dog chewing on a bone. Then the Grim Reaper called to me."

She shrugged again. "That's all I really remember."

Ginny grinned, but Olivia could see the concern in her eyes. "I think someone's been watching too many scary movies," she said.

Relieved to have an explanation, Liv said, "Well, I haven't had much to do all day, and with Halloween right around the corner, there have been a lot of them on TV."

"I should bring you some of my Harlequin Romance novels," Ginnny suggested. "I know they're not exactly scholarly reading, but I guarantee they will give you much nicer dreams."

"That would be nice," Olivia decided. It couldn't hurt, and it might even ease some of the sexual tension she had been dealing with since the doctor had told her she couldn't make love until after she delivered the twins. Of course, if they were any good, they might just create _more_ tension, she realized with a slight frown.

"Ok, then, I'll be sure to bring a few when I come by tomorrow," Ginny promised. "Now why don't you go upstairs and have a nice warm bath? I've put some of those lavender-scented salts in it. It will make you feel better."

Liv didn't need to be told twice. Despite Ginny's explanation for her bad dream, she felt like the spring in a watch that had been wound too tight and was about to snap. The image made her wrap her arms around herself and shiver. After the dream she'd had, it was natural that such an analogy would come to mind, but it still upset her.

"Go on, now," Ginny said. "I'm just going to start the dishwasher for you and then I'll be up to sort the laundry."

"You don't have to do that," Olivia said, standing up.

"And what am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait on you to finish your bath?" She shook her head, "Don't you worry about me, Missy! I can't be still and I'm happy to help."

Impulsively, Olivia put her arms around the older woman and gave her an affectionate kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, so much, for everything," she said.

Ginny put her hand to her cheek and blushed red. Her mouth opened in a surprised little 'o', but she quickly recovered her efficient attitude.

"I said get!" she commanded. "If you're not in the tub by the time I get up there, I'm telling your husband on you!"

Olivia giggled childishly and waddled up the steps as quickly as she could.

_Room 117  
St. Vincent's Hospital, Manhattan  
9:42 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

". . . and I counted to a thousand, just like he said I should, and then I dialed 911."

As Julianne Beiber finished telling them what her attacker had done to her, she dissolved into tears.

"I'm sorry," she wept as Dani silently handed her the box of tissues. "I . . . it's just . . . I didn't know what else to do!"

Dani placed her hand over Mrs. Beiber's and said, "Julianne, listen to me. You did exactly what you're supposed to do in a situation like that. You survived, and if you're thinking you should have done more, don't. There's no way to know what _might_ have happened if you had tried to run or fight. It could have just as easily gotten you killed, but what you did kept you alive, so you know it was the right thing, ok?"

Julianne nodded, and as Dani gently rubbed the back of her hand, her weeping subsided to sniffles. Elliot suppressed a smile. Now was not the time to look pleased, but he couldn't help feeling it. It had taken some coaching, but Beck had learned how to deal with the victims. Oh, she was still an abrasive pain in the ass with her colleagues, and he wouldn't have it any other way, but with the victims, she was compassionate, sensitive, supportive, and patient.

"Mrs. Beiber," he finally said from his seat in the corner, close enough that he could hear her answers to Dani's questions but far enough away that he wouldn't make the woman uncomfortable, "I know it was really difficult to describe all of that for us, but everything you can remember will help us put your attacker in jail. There are just a few more questions we have to ask, and then we can leave you alone, all right?"

She smiled sadly him and nodded. "I . . . I'll try to answer."

"Ok, first, and most important, do you have any idea who might have attacked you?"

"Yes," she whimpered. "Well, no, not exactly."

Elliot frowned. She wasn't making sense.

"Anything you can tell us will be a help," Dani said.

"He, uh, he works at the market where I do my grocery shopping," she said. "It's a little bodega just down the block from our building. I don't know if it even has a proper name, but it has a garish bright yellow and red awning."

"Ok," Dani encouraged her, "and what's his name?"

"I . . . I don't know that either," she said. "He's a polite young man, quiet, tall, very thin. He has curly brown hair that he parts on the . . ."

She closed her eyes and ran a finger through her own hair trying to fix the image in her mind. "He parts it on the right as you're looking at him, so on his left, and he wears thick, wire-rimmed glasses. He seemed so nice, and I was always nice to him. Why did he do this to me?"

"Ma'am, I've been working in Special Victims almost twenty years, now," Elliot said gently, "and there are as many reasons as there are rapists. You're probably better off not knowing why he did it. It doesn't matter anyway, we're going to catch him and he's going to be punished. What you need to remember is that it wasn't your fault."

She sniffled again and nodded.

"Can you describe him for a sketch artist?" Dani asked.

"I . . .I can draw him for you," she said. "That's what I do. I'm a graphic designer."

Dani looked to Elliot, and he nodded. "I'll go to the nurse's station and see if they have some paper and a pencil for you, but only if you're sure you're up to it," he said.

"I think . . . maybe it would help me deal with it," she said, "knowing that I actually did something useful. Don't you think?"

Elliot was no psychologist, so he really didn't know how to answer, but left to get the paper anyway.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
10:28 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"All right, Dearie," Mrs. Marchesi said as she put away her blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. "You seem to be doing just fine. How are you feeling?"

Olivia smiled and shook her head. "Like a whale." When Ginny raised a concerned eyebrow, she amended, "A very happy whale, granted, but I've gained forty pounds."

"For a woman having twins, that's not all that bad," Ginny pointed out, "especially when your exercise has been restricted for six months."

"Oh, I know," Olivia replied, "and it's not the weight that bothers me, it's just that I'm not used to being so big. It makes me feel really clumsy and awkward. Elliot and I can't even share the bathroom mirror in the morning anymore because we can't both fit between the sink and the wall."

Ginny chuckled and placed her hand on Olivia's enormous belly. "Trust me, Dear, soon after these girls are out in the world you'll feel much more graceful again. Have you been doing your kick counts?"

Liv nodded. "I get about eighteen to twenty-five every two hours."

"That's good. I'd say you have two healthy and active little ones in there," Ginny told her. "What about perineal massage and the Kegel exercises?"

Olivia groaned and made a face that made Ginny laugh. "We've been doing them for three weeks now. Elliot does the massage because I can't reach down there anymore, and I do the Kegels every day. I know how important they are, but they're _killing_ me!"

Ginny looked at her with grave concern. "Sweetie, if it hurts either you're doing something wrong or there's something wrong _with_ you. Have you talked to your doctor?"

Blushing a bit, Olivia explained, "It doesn't hurt, Ginny, but I haven't been allowed to have sex since the bleeding, and that was six months ago, and well . . ."

Ginny held up a hand and said, "I get the idea now. If it's any consolation at all, after labor and delivery, you probably won't want him poking around down there for quite a while."

"I know," Olivia pouted, "but it would be nice if I could actually finish what he gets started every now and then!"

Ginny chuckled again and helped her out of the chair. "Once those girls arrive, healthy and beautiful, it will seem a small price to pay."

Once she was on her feet, Olivia placed a hand protectively over her abdomen and said, "I've been very lucky, you know. It's a big deal for a woman my age to be having twins. When I started bleeding at twelve weeks, I thought it would be the end of the world; but with you and Elliot looking out for me, I've taken really good care of myself, and within the next couple of weeks, I'm going to have a beautiful family."

They moved slowly down the stairs as they talked with Ginny leading the way.

"You know, I have never seen a man so excited about fatherhood as your Elliot," she said. "After raising four kids already, you'd think it would be all old hat for him."

Olivia shook her head as they went into the kitchen and she got her vitamins out of the cupboard. "Not him," she said. "There's a side to his personality that most people only get to see when he's dealing with kids. He has this sense of wonder and excitement about life and a silliness in him that just doesn't jive with the big tough cop I used to work with."

"I think you bring a lot of that out of him," Ginny commented, taking a bottle of water out of the fridge and opening it for Olivia.

"Me, really? Why do you say that?"

Ginny gave her a look that said, 'Oh, come on!'

"Honestly," Olivia told her, "I don't know what you mean." She put the vitamin in her mouth and swallowed it with a huge gulp of water.

"What man is going to dress as Gomez Addams if there isn't a Morticia to stand by his side?"

Olivia giggled and said, "Ok, there is that, but I'll have you know, even before then, he couldn't get to sleep on Christmas Eve and he woke me before dawn on Christmas Day."

"I didn't say it wasn't in him before. I just think you draw it out of him," Ginny said with a wink. "Now, if you're set for the day, I need to pick up my daughter Rebecca's boys for their orthodontist appointment."

"She has three kids, doesn't she?"

"Yep," Ginny nodded, "and she schedules all three of them to have their braces adjusted at the same time every month. That way she only has to serve applesauce and mashed potatoes one week a month. If the doctor had his way, though, I think one of them would always be whining in pain."

Olivia frowned. "I know Maureen and Rick had braces. Are crooked teeth genetic? Do you think the girls will need them?"

Ginny laughed aloud. "Sweetheart, you have _at_ _least_ eleven or twelve years before you have to worry about that. Don't rush things! Besides, for all you know, your step-children could have inherited that from their mother."

"I suppose so. Besides, I'm sure there will be a lot of other little crises I have to deal with before that one, won't there?"

"Yes, there will," Ginny confirmed, "and maybe some big ones, but you can take it from me, there will come a point when you can look back and realize that even the tough times are part of the joy of raising your children."

Olivia smiled at the thought. Ginny cleared her throat, shook off the nostalgia, and asked, "Now, I couldn't help noticing that your cupboards looked a little bare. Is there anything I can get you while I'm running my errands?"

Olivia shook her head. "Elliot's going to go grocery shopping when he gets home from work this evening. I just need to make him a list."

"Ok, then," Ginny said as she headed toward the door, "but you have my cell number. Don't hesitate to call if you need anything."

"I won't," Olivia promised. "You have a good day, and I'll see you tomorrow."

_Whitford's_ _Market  
284 West 46th Street  
10:46 A.M., October 28, 2011_

Dani walked around the shop casually inspecting items while Elliot quietly located the owner, a man of Indian ancestry whose accent made every statement sound like a question. He wondered if he'd bought the shop from the original owner and just never changed its name, but that had nothing to do with the case, so he let the thought go.

"Excuse me," Elliot said, discretely flashing his badge. Showing the shopkeeper Julianne Beiber's drawing of her rapist, he asked, "Do you know this man?"

"Yes? I know him?" the store owner replied.

"Is he working today?"

"No? As a matter of fact, he quit today?" Elliot had to make an effort not to offer some kind of answer. Though the man's tone was questioning, his words were clearly making a statement. Also, he knew if he just let people talk, they would often give him information he would never think to ask for.

"It really surprised me? He was a hard worker, much better than most lazy young people these days, and I thought he would at least give me two weeks notice? But he said he had a family emergency and had to leave town? So I gave him his final paycheck and wished him luck?"

"Could you tell me his name?" Elliot asked with a sudden sense of urgency and gestured Dani to join him at the front of the store. They couldn't lose this guy, not when the victim had made it so easy for them to find him.

The man frowned suspiciously. "Neil . . . Neil, um . . . his last name is very difficult for me to pronounce? Why do you need to speak to him?"

"We think he may have been a witness to that wreck down the street a couple of weeks ago," Dani jumped in before Elliot realized that there had actually been a question asked this time. He shot her a puzzled frown and she replied with a tiny shrug. She could adlib a hell of a lot better than he did, and sometimes it was hard for him to keep up.

The store owner frowned thoughtfully for a moment and then nodded in realization. "Oh, yes, _that_ accident! Very bad, it was? Very bad, but Neil was here when it happened?"

"He probably was, sir, but since he was identified as a witness, we need to find him and get him to tell us that himself for it to be official," Elliot explained. "If you could just give us his name and address that would be a huge help."

"Let me get his information card for you?"

As the owner moved behind the counter and looked through a drawer in a small filing cabinet, Elliot flipped open his phone and called the station.

"_Special Victims Unit, Detective Munch."_

"Yeah, John, we found him," Elliot said, making a mental note not to say anything that would make the shop owner realize Neil was actually wanted for a crime. Though the guy seemed quite willing to help, he also seemed to think rather highly of their suspect and there was no telling if he might decide to tip Neil off. "He's on his way out of town."

"_So you need a warrant ASAP."_

"Yeah. His name's Neil . . ." he turned to look at the card from which Dani was copying. "Oh, hell, no wonder his boss couldn't pronounce it. You speak a little Russian. I don't know if that's what this is, but maybe you can tell me how to say it. It's spelled C-Z-A-R-H-Y-S-K-I-N-S-K-Y."

"_Thirteen letters and only two vowels."_

Elliot could hear the smirk on his colleagues face.

"_The guy probably had some illiterate ancestor come through Ellis Island, and since he couldn't read or write, he had no idea how badly the officials were butchering his name. Not that I have anything against illiterate ancestors, most of us have one or two, but sheesh! I lived down the street from a kid whose grandfather and grandmother had the same last name spelled differently on all of their immigration documents."_

"That's interesting, John," Elliot jumped in when Munch paused for breath, "and before you tell me, I know a lot of names were anglicized for the convenience of customs officials, but how would you pronounce this one?"

"_C-Z-A-R-H-Y-S-K-I-N-S-K-Y, right?"_

"Yeah."

"_I guess it's za-riss-KIN-skee, but that **is** just a guess. The CZA could be pronounced cha like the CZE in Czech and RHYS could be rees, but he's probably so used to hearing it mispronounced that he'll know who you are talking about anyway."_

"Ok, thanks, Munch," he said jotting the pronunciation in his notebook.

"_What's his address?"_

Elliot craned to see over Dani's shoulder and read, "317 West 141st Street,"

"_Ok, I'll see about getting that warrant. Someone will meet you there."_

"Great. Thanks." Elliot clicked his phone shut and turned to the shop owner saying, "Thank you, sir. You have been very helpful."

"I am hoping this will not interfere with Neil's plans to go home?" the man said. "He did seem quite upset? I think it was something serious?"

It wasn't really a question, but it did deserve a response.

"We'll try not to delay him any longer than necessary," Elliot promised. He elected not to mention that Rape I was a Class B felony and the state figured five to twenty-five years wasn't any longer than necessary.

As they hurried to the car, he said to Dani, "That wreck down the street a couple of weeks ago? Where the hell did that come from?"

She grinned and shrugged. "This street is busy enough that I'm sure he's seen more than one. I was deliberately vague so his mind could fill in the blanks with something he really did remember."

"And what if the last wreck he did remember was say, three months ago?" he asked as they climbed into the sedan.

"It was only a fender bender, sir," she said as if speaking to the shop owner. "I'm not at all surprised that it escaped your notice."

Shaking his head, he started the car and said, "We have got to work out a signal so you can warn me when you're about to pull something like that. One of these days, you're gonna catch me by surprise and I'm gonna blow it for you."

"Next time I'll pull on my ear or something," she laughed, and buckled her seat belt, which he found ironic considering the way she drove when he was riding shotgun.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
10:54 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Once Ginny had pulled out of the driveway, Olivia shut the door tight against the cold and set the alarm, wandered back into the house, and looked around. She was restless and felt like doing something. Nodding decisively, she headed for the den. She'd bought a couple of beat up old nursery rhyme books at a consignment shop months ago planning to use some of the better pages to decorate the nursery walls. Then last month she found frames with mats included that were perfect for the eight-inch square pictures on sale at a discount store a few blocks from home, but they were all black. She bought them anyway, planning to paint them to match the nursery, but she and Elliot had only agreed on that last week.

As soon as they found out the twins were going to be girls, Elliot had wanted to paint the walls a pastel pink and make the trim a crisp, bright white, but Olivia hadn't wanted to stick her daughters in the blue-is-for-boys-pink-is-for-girls stereotype from birth. She wanted sunny yellow walls with green trim, but Elliot just plain didn't like the colors. After months of disagreement, Olivia found a picture in a magazine of a room that had been painted with several colors, and they agreed that it would work for them. Now, the nursery would have one pastel pink wall, one sunny yellow wall, one light green wall, and one light orange wall. The ceiling would be baby blue, and the trim would be pale lavender. The hardwood floors were a nice pale ash, and the rug they had bought showed Mary, Mary quite contrary in her garden and had all the paint colors in it. The decorating scheme sounded odd when they described it for their friends, but it was almost finished, and it looked great so far. It also meant that almost any decorations they chose would fit right in.

Maybe if she got the mats and frames painted and put the pictures in them, Rick would have time to hang them for her this afternoon.

She got her goody bag out of the den and took it back to the kitchen. If she spilled paint, there was no way she could crawl on the floor to clean it up, and it would be easier for Elliot to scrape dried paint off the linoleum in the kitchen than to scrub it out of the carpet in the den. She covered the table with newspapers, set all of her supplies out, peeled the plastic film wrappers off the frames, took the glass out of each one, and laid the mats and frames out on the table. Then she realized with a frown that she was wearing her very last unstained maternity top. With a groan, she pushed her chair back from the table and trudged upstairs to find one of Elliot's ratty old t-shirts that she could wear to protect her clothes.

"He's gonna get you!"

She clutched the railing and froze in place. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she shook her head. "It's your imagination playing tricks on you," she told herself firmly. "All the neighborhood kids are still in school."

She nodded her head, conceding her own point and continued up the stairs and into the bedroom. Elliot's closet, as usual, was a bit of a mess. He wasn't a slob by any means, but in his mind, when it came to clutter, if you couldn't see it, it wasn't clutter. So, as long as he could shut the closet door, everything was in order as far as he was concerned.

She smiled ruefully and started organizing his clothes as much to help her find what she wanted as to tidy things up for him. She wasn't surprised to find some dirty clothes on the floor, but she couldn't bend over and pick them up. Kicking them into the bedroom, she made a mental note to have Rick collect them when she asked him to help her with the laundry. She laughed to herself. The poor boy didn't know what he was in for when he came to help her today.

As she sorted Elliot's trousers, shirts, and jackets, grouping like items together on the hanging rod, she gradually became aware of a faint 'whooshing' noise. At first she thought it was the noise made when Elliot's clothes brushed against each other as she shuffled them around in the closet, but she quickly realized it was far more rhythmic than her movements.

Was it the wind? She glanced out the window, but the leaves that remained on the trees were still. Maybe the furnace? No, she knew that sound. She stopped working and listened more intently. The sound got louder. It wasn't the water heater or the refrigerator or any of the other appliances. She held her breath. It wasn't coming from outside, either. It was a steady, measured rise and fall, in and out, in and out, like the house was breathing.

_In and out . . . in and out . . ._

She shivered and wrapped her arms protectively around herself as she concentrated, trying to discern where the noise was coming from. Maybe it had something to do with the air movement in the house. When the furnace kicked on, it could set up a draft. She'd never noticed it before, but last year, when it had started getting cold, she was still working.

_In and out . . . in and out . . ._

It kept going, perfectly steady. She walked slowly through the bedroom, checking for drafts but somehow knowing that she wouldn't find any. Without meaning to, she found herself breathing along with it, and she deliberately stopped for a moment, just to make her own breaths out of time with the noise.

_In and out . . . in and out . . ._

She knew severe post-partum depression could cause psychosis, but she didn't think she was depressed, and she sure as hell wasn't post partum. Maybe she should call George Huang. He could probably tell her why she was hearing things, and even if he couldn't he would at least be able to calm her down.

_In and out . . . in and out . . ._

Now that was dumb. If she knew she was hearing things, she didn't need a shrink, did she? But then again, if she was hearing things, she was, well, _hearing things_.

_In and out . . . in and out . . ._

This was ridiculous. There had to be a source for the sound and she was determined to find it. As she crept warily across the carpet, she could feel her heart racing in her chest and her limbs tensing. She tried to tell herself she was just being silly, that she had worked herself into a state over nothing, but the harder she listened, the more malevolent it sounded. There was a faint rumble and a squeak, and she froze in place to hear it better. A sudden gasp made her jump, and then the house was silent.

Her palms were sweaty and her chest felt tight. She was panting for breath and she wanted to run, but not knowing what she was running from or where she ought to be running to left her feet stuck to the floor. Her legs were trembling and her knees knocked together.

After a long, incredibly tense moment, the silence was shattered by a violent pounding like something trying to bash its way through the wall.

Olivia screamed and dropped to the floor.


	6. Visitors

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Six  
Visitors**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
11:17 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

From her defensive position on the floor, it only took Olivia a moment to realize she was not under attack. Someone was knocking at the door. When she heard Rick call her name, she yelled down, "Just a minute!" and hoped he wouldn't use his key to let himself in.

It was going to be a trick to get up from where she was lying half-sideways on the floor because her large belly prevented her from lying face down. She didn't particularly want an audience for the show, but knew she would be the first thing her stepson saw if he came upstairs looking for her.

Twisting her upper body so she could get both hands under her, she pushed up and then turned her hips so she was on all fours. Crawling over to the foot of the bed, she used it to push herself upright and then into a standing position. Holding onto one of the posts that supported the canopy, a "girlie" thing which Elliot had consented to buy only because she had wanted one all her life and only after she let him get a wide-screen TV, she took a moment to steady herself before moving any further. As she left the room, she paused before the cheval mirror to straighten her clothes. Only when she was certain that she was presentable did she finally head carefully down the stairs.

_Apartment of Neil Czarhyskinsky  
317 West 141st Street, Harlem  
11:22 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Elliot and Dani were in luck. Their suspect had a ground floor apartment at the front of the building, so they could peek in through the windows and get the lay of the land from the street before they actually went in.

"I see lots of packing boxes," Elliot said.

"Yeah, but no Neil," Dani replied.

Elliot shrugged. "We can wait." He turned to the young officer who had brought them the warrant and shook the paper at him. "Thanks for this. We'll call the captain and let him know what's up."

The officer nodded. "Ok. Good luck getting your guy."

"Thanks," Elliot said as they parted ways, then he asked Dani, "You want to hang out here or do you want to go pick up our lunch?"

Dani looked around. "There's a bus shelter, I got a paper in the car, it's a nice day. I can sit there and look like I'm waiting on the bus. You go get lunch."

"Burgers sound ok to you?" he asked as he got into the car and she hunted in back for her newspaper.

Her eyes lit up at the thought, "Yeah, with bacon, mushrooms, and cheese if you go somewhere that does them like that, and . . ."

"I know," Elliot chuckled, "large onion rings instead of fries and a regular root beer."

"And pie."

"Apple or cherry?"

"Doesn't matter, as long as it's hot, and a coffee to go with dessert." She shut the door and moved over to the bus shelter to watch for Czarhyskinsky.

Elliot drove away laughing; she'd eat all of her lunch and half of his if he'd let her. Early in their partnership, he had wondered if Dani didn't have an eating disorder, but before long, he realized that she got so wrapped up in her work that she often only ate twice a day, sometimes once, and she burned off all the calories with her constant fidgeting. She always had a foot tapping or her fingers playing with a pen, and he knew she was in great shape because whenever they had to run a suspect down, she usually caught up with the guy first. Her eating habits were unusual, but she didn't have a problem as far as he could tell.

As he sat in the car waiting his turn at the drive through, Elliot called Cragen on his cell and told him what was up. Cragen gave him the ok to sit and wait for Czarhyskinsky to come back for his stuff and offered to send another team to take over the stakeout if they were still there after nine. Then it was his turn. He pulled up to the intercom and gave the young woman at the window his surprisingly large order.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
2:35 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

_Tick-tick-tick-tick._

Olivia looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall and sighed in frustration. It was really getting on her nerves. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax and then went back to her project. Rick was upstairs touching up the nursery so there wouldn't be any splatters showing, and she really wanted to get the pictures done in time for him to hang for Elliot to see when he got home.

She'd finished painting the frames and mats before lunch. Then she'd ordered a pizza which she and Rick had shared in the family room, _shared_ meaning she had eaten one piece and he had scarfed down the other seven like some wild creature gorging on his prey before it gets stolen by a larger, fiercer predator, which, she supposed, could have been Elliot if he had been home to join them.

After dining, if her stepson's table manners could be referred to as such, Rick had carried the laundry baskets down to the laundry room in the basement and placed them on the table she used to fold her clean clothes. It was easy enough for her to move a few things at a time from the basket to the washer and from the washer to the dryer, but she didn't want to keep interrupting him to unload the dryer while he was working, so while the picture frames dried, she hung a lot of things from the clotheslines Elliot had strung through eyebolts in the basement walls. Reaching up was much easier than bending over at this point in her pregnancy.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick._

The laundry was done for now, with everything hanging on the clothesline or spread out on a table or a laundry basket to dry flat, and the picture frames and mats were dry. All she had left to do was select the pictures she wanted to use and trim them to fit the mats.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick._

She was surprised how many nursery rhymes were really horrid once you thought about them; and even worse, some of the illustrations in the books she had bought were quite graphic. She knew some, like "Ring Around the Rosie" which referred to the plague, were full of morbid symbolism; but that didn't bother her because kids didn't think about stuff like that. What upset her was the amount of blood, violence, and abuse in some of them.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick._

She didn't remember Tom, Tom, the piper's son as a rag-clad, starving waif who was beaten for eating the pig he stole, but the story was there in black and white, and the illustrations were full color. At the end of "Sing a Song of Sixpence," the maid who had her nose pecked off by a blackbird had bright red blood dribbling down onto the bib of her apron from behind her hand which, thankfully, covered the hole in her face where her nose had been. She had forgotten that the Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe had whipped her children, too. And "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home / your house is on fire, your children will burn." What the hell was that?

It was going to be harder than she thought to choose six pages that she wanted to frame.

_Tick-tick-tick-tick._

And she simply couldn't think with that damned clock ticking away in her head! At wit's end, she slammed her hands down on the table and stood up, shoving her chair back so hard it tipped over. Stomping across the kitchen, she pulled the clock off the wall and removed the battery. The she righted her chair, took her seat, and contemplated her nursery rhyme prints.

"Everything all right down there?" Rick called from the head of the stairs.

"Yeah, I just knocked over my chair. I'm fine," she responded, turning her head to shout in the general direction of the stairs.

As she turned back to her task, she caught sight of a face staring in her kitchen window and screamed.

_Apartment of Neil Czarhyskinsky  
317 West 141st Street, Harlem  
2:52 A.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Dani shifted uncomfortably in her seat and crossed her legs. She sighed loudly, and her right foot started bouncing. She ran through the stations on the radio, but it seemed there was nothing to her liking, so she turned it off. She shifted position again, and Elliot had to smile. Between his three daughters, his ex-wife, Olivia, and the five years he'd spent partnered with Dani, he'd spent enough time around women to read the signals.

"You ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, fine. Why?"

He shrugged. "No reason, just asking."

There was a moment of silence in the car, broken only by Dani's incessant fidgeting.

"Looks like rain," he said, glancing up at the gray clouds scudding across the sky. "I'll bet it pours tonight. My street's probably going to flood. The city hasn't collected leaves where I live yet, and they're gonna clog the storm sewers. Instead of just trickling away, all that water's gonna puddle up in the street and on my lawn."

Dani grunted some kind of acknowledgment, crossed her left leg over her right, and turned to look out the passenger side window.

Elliot suppressed a grin. She didn't even know what he was doing. If she did, she'd have given him hell for it already. The thought crossed his mind that he was evil, but then he piously reminded himself that she didn't need to have a potty emergency in the middle of chasing a suspect if Czarhyskinsky should show up. He glanced down at the cup his soda had come in. Was it too mean? He decided not. He took his soda out of the cup holder and slurped up the water that had melted from the ice, just to torture her. This time, his partner's sigh was almost a groan.

Her foot bounced faster. He slurped again.

"Look, I . . ."

"There's a coffee shop this side of the street in the middle of the next block," he said with an impish grin. "I'm sure you can use the restroom there."

"Sometimes I hate you," she said, opening the door.

"Don't forget your radio," he said as he handed it to her.

"Thanks."

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"While you're there, could you get me a large coffee and maybe six packs of sugar?"

"Ok," she said, and shut the car door.

He chuckled as he watched her move through the crowd as fast as she could without breaking into a run. Then he opened his phone and dialed his son.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
3:00 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Olivia, I'm so sorry," Maureen apologized again. "I just happened to glance in the window as I was walking by and saw you at the table. I wondered what you were doing, so I stopped to watch."

"What the hell were you doing creeping around back anyway?" Rick asked. Olivia's scream had left him as shaken as either of the women.

"_Somebody_ didn't pull ahead far enough in the driveway and I had to park in the alley," she said, giving her brother a meaningful look. "The kitchen door was closer than walking all the way around to the front."

Rick was saved from having to apologize by the ringing of his cell phone, but he was also still so agitated that it caused him to jump about two feet in the air, making both of the women laugh. As the two of them discussed Olivia's plans for the picture frames, Rick moved to the corner of the kitchen to take his call.

"Hello?"

"_Hi, Son, how's it going?"_

"Oh, ok, except that Maureen just scared the living crap out of Liv and me."

"_How did she do that?"_

Rick grinned wickedly at his sister. "Easy. She showed her face."

Maureen stuck her tongue out at her little brother, and he responded by thumbing his nose at her. Olivia chuckled quietly and rolled her eyes at the two of them, conveniently forgetting that she and Elliot had been known to behave the same way on numerous occasions.

"_How's Olivia?"_

Rick had the volume on his phone turned up so high that Olivia heard her name mentioned, so she turned her head and listened. She didn't consider it eavesdropping, because her stepson could see her right in front of him listening in.

"She's fine."

"_She hasn't been irritable or acting strangely?"_

"Not to me. You want to talk to her? She's right here."

"Define strangely!" Olivia called out to Elliot.

Elliot sighed. "_Rick, the point of calling you was so that I could be discreet about looking in on her."_

"Oh, sorry."

"_It's all right. Put her on the phone."_

Olivia chuckled and asked teasingly, "Are you spying on me?"

"_Yes, I am."_

She giggled. "Thanks."

"_So, how has your day been?"_

"Not bad. Ginny pronounced me in good health again today, Rick helped me with the laundry and I think he's almost finished with the nursery," she said.

"I am finished," he interjected. "I was just cleaning up when Scary arrived."

Maureen made another face at him, he made a face back, and Olivia laughed.

"_What?"_

"Your children are making faces at each other," she said. "Rick says he is done in the nursery."

"_And you're feeling all right?"_

"Yes, Elliot, I feel fine," she said. It wasn't really a lie. Physically, she did feel fine, and when weird noises weren't freaking her out, she was emotionally fine as well. He had enough on his mind with work, she wasn't going to worry him when she knew it was just her imagination running away with her because she was getting bored with being home alone all the time.

"So, what have you been doing today?"

"_First we interviewed that victim we took to the hospital yesterday evening," _he said.

"She woke up? That's good. Was she able to give you anything useful?"

"_Yeah, a drawing of her attacker and the place where he worked," _Elliot replied. "_So we went there to look for him, but, big surprise, he quit just this morning, collected his last paycheck and said he was leaving town. His boss gave us his address, and Beck and I checked it out. We can see lots of packing crates through the windows, but he's nowhere to be found, so now we're waiting for him to show."_

"A stakeout," Olivia said. "That's one thing I'm never going to miss."

"_Yeah, rub it in. You'll probably be changing diapers next time I'm on one."_

"Beats sitting in the car in the cold all night," Olivia teased.

"_Yeah, I hear you. Rub it in why don't you. Look, my partner's back from her bathroom break, and now I need to go."_

"Ugh, thanks for sharing! Too much information, El."

"_Whatever. I'll call around four-thirty if it looks like I'm going to be working late, ok?"_

"All right. Love you."

"_Love you, too. Bye."_

Olivia sighed happily. When she saw Rick and Maureen batting their eyes at each other like a couple of love birds to mock her and their dad, she stuck her tongue out at them.

"Here," she handed the phone to Rick.

He checked to make sure it was off, and noticed the time. "Holy crap! Liv, did you know you clock is more than half an hour behind?"

She shrugged. "Yeah. I took the batteries out because the ticking was getting on my nerves. Why?"

"Because I'm going to be late for my study group if I don't hurry," he said. "Look, I'll finish cleaning up, but then I gotta go." Looking at his sister, he asked, "Mo, will you help her hang the pictures?"

"Sure thing," Maureen agreed.

With a nod of thanks, Rick sprinted up the steps, taking them two at a time.

"You know, you don't have to do that, Maureen," Olivia said. "Don't you have a baby to get home to?"

Maureen shook her head. "Jim works from home on Fridays, remember? I get a day off from housework and he gets what amounts to a three-day weekend and some daddy-daughter time."

"That's right, I forgot," Olivia replied, and she added thoughtfully, "I wonder if Cragen could schedule your dad's shifts like that. I don't think there's any reason he couldn't work four ten-hour days and maybe be on call once a week. It would be nice for him to have more time to spend with the girls."

"It couldn't hurt to ask," Maureen said, "and I'm sure the fact that Daddy could retire any time he wanted would be an added incentive to try to accommodate him."

"Oh, that wouldn't have anything to do with it. Don is a good guy. If there's any way to do it, all your dad would have to do is ask and he would try to work it out," Olivia said.

There was a quiet moment, and Olivia suddenly realized what she had said.

"Maureen, things have changed a lot in the past several years. They don't schedule shifts like they used to, and . . ."

Maureen smiled. "Relax, Liv," she said, "we're all happy that he's so excited about the twins, and we know it's not that he loves them more or loved us less and it has nothing to do with whether he loves you more than our mom or anything like that. He's just a different guy than he was when we were little. He's mellowed out a lot."

Olivia laughed. "He sure has."

"You know, Kat and I were talking about it a few weeks ago," Maureen said. "It seems like, around the time he signed the divorce papers, he finally worked out whatever had been eating at him for so long and started to feel better about everything."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, it was like, he finally figured out that he everyone who mattered knew what a great guy he was, and he didn't have to work so hard to prove it anymore."

Olivia nodded. "You could be right," she said noncommittally. She knew the change Maureen was talking about had happened shortly after she and Elliot had started sleeping together, but she wasn't comfortable sharing something that personal with her stepdaughter.

Looking down at the picture frames and nursery rhyme pages scattered over the table top, she sighed and asked, "I don't suppose you would want to help me pick out half a dozen of these to frame, would you?"


	7. Working Late

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Seven  
Working Late**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
3:38 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

The three of them stood in the doorway admiring the results of their work. Maureen stood on one side with her arm around Olivia's waist, Rick stood on the other with an arm around her shoulders, and Olivia felt a happy, warm feeling that she had never experienced until Elliot's kids had accepted her as a part of their family. The different colored walls of the nursery reminded Olivia of a patchwork baby quilt she had seen on E-Bay so much that she now wished she had bid on it.

"I like the way you have each mat in the wall color and the frame in the color of the opposite wall," Rick said. "It's an interesting effect."

"That was your sister's idea," Olivia said.

"Oh, well then, maybe it's not so great after all," he teased.

"I love you, too, _Dickie_!" Maureen taunted him back and reached behind Liv to tug gently on his longish curls. "You need a haircut."

He rolled his eyes. "Dad's been telling me that for weeks. I'm in a band, remember? Long hair is part of our look."

"Do you get paid?"

"Up to five hundred bucks a gig when there's a good crowd, and free drinks, not that it matters since I'm underage."

"Five hundred bucks a gig?" Maureen asked, and Rick could hear the teasing tone in her voice, but couldn't see what was coming.

"Yeah," he said warily, "why?"

"Well, then, you can afford a haircut."

He didn't mind laughing at his own expense. Then he turned back to the nursery, nodded his approval and said, "Yeah, it looks good."

Once Olivia and Maureen had picked out the nursery rhymes they wanted to use, things had fallen together quite quickly. Elliot had assembled the nursery furniture and installed the curtain rods the previous weekend, so once Rick had finished cleaning up, it was just a matter of hanging the drapes and the pictures, taking the drop cloths off the furniture, hanging a couple of mobiles, and rolling out the rug. The nursery looked warm and inviting, and once they unpacked all the baby clothes people had given them and stocked the changing table with necessities, it would be ready for the twins.

"Dad's gonna love it," Maureen declared.

"I can't thank you two enough," Olivia said, "It's just beautiful."

Bo Peep and Miss Muffet shared the space above one crib, and Old King Cole and Jack and Jill graced opposite wall above the other crib. Little Boy Blue was on the blue wall beside the closet, and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep hung between the windows.

"Now I wish we had done something like this for Nathalie instead of blowing a fortune on all of that commercialized Disney junk," Maureen said.

"I don't know," Olivia told her. "The way Disney markets their stuff, it will grow with Nattie. The twins will outgrow this theme before they start school."

Maureen's eyes lit up and she said, "Hey, maybe by then Jim and I will have another baby and you can give us some of this stuff to decorate with."

"Sorry, Mo, but I think I'll be putting this all into storage for the girls to pass on to their own kids someday," Olivia said, "but _you_ can have the pages that are left from the books." She didn't want to seem greedy or selfish, but she wanted her girls to have a sense of family history and heritage that she never known. Growing up without much of a family to speak of had made her treasure the possibility that she would now have heirlooms to pass on and people to pass them on to.

"Couldn't hurt to ask," Maureen said. After a moment, she looked to her brother and said, "You're awfully quiet, Rick."

He sighed heavily, thought for a moment, and finally decided to say what was on his mind. "I know Dad loved our mom, and I know there was a time when they were _really_ happy together," he said, "but I'm not old enough to remember it."

He squeezed Olivia around the shoulders and kissed her on the temple. "Thank you for making him happy again."

Maureen sniffled, and this time, instead of pulling her brother's hair, she ran her fingers affectionately through his curls.

Olivia had to swallow hard to shift the lump that had formed in her throat. "If you make me cry, I swear I'm going to hurt you," she warned him.

He laughed slightly and glanced at his watch. "Actually, I have to get going," he told her. "If I'm late again, my study group is gonna kill me."

Liv chuckled. "Like father, like son," she said, and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Drive carefully and study hard."

"Will do," Rick said, and he wrapped her gently in a hug. Then he turned and bounded down the stairs, calling casually back over his shoulder, "Love you, Liv! See you later, Sis!"

At some point over the past two years, it had become natural for her and the kids to express their mutual affection. She got a little misty as she realized that, just as Elliot hadn't ever felt he deserved to be loved before they got together, she had never known how much love she could feel for and from others until his kids had welcomed her into their hearts.

Maureen crossed the room and sat in the window seat to wave goodbye to her brother as he drove away. Then she turned to Olivia and said, "I should probably get going, too, unless you need help with something. Jim's parents are watching Nattie so we can have a date night. It's our first one since she was born and he promised me dinner and dancing. I saw this gorgeous red dress at the mall, and I want to see if they have it in my size. Are you gonna be all right until Dad gets home?"

Liv nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Honestly, she would rather not be alone, but she wasn't going to spoil Maureen and Jim's good time just because she had an overactive imagination.

"You're sure?" Maureen gave her that same look with the narrowed eyes and the wrinkled brow that she had gotten from Elliot that morning, and she wondered if Alexandra and Casey would favor their father as much as the other girls did.

"Yes, I'm sure," she said, groaning in exasperation. "And when you get home, maybe you can make a little whoopee for me. It's been a long six months."

Maureen made a face. "Too much information, Liv. I mean, you _are_ married to my father."

Olivia gave her an evil grin and said, "Then you better get going, because if you don't I'm going to start complaining about perineal massages and Kegel exercises."

The threat was enough. Maureen gave her a quick peck on the cheek and fled down the stairs saying, "Ok, I know my way out. Love you, and call if you need anything."

"Take care sweetie," Olivia called after her, and listened to make sure the alarm engaged when the door shut.

Hearing the reassuring beep that told her no one could sneak in without her knowing, she went back to the nursery and sighed contentedly. It was a beautiful room and Maureen was right, Elliot would love it. It would warm with the morning sun and remain comfortable throughout the day. Birds and squirrels nested in the tree just outside the window, and when the girls got old enough to be interested in such things, she could sit on the window seat with them and watch the small creatures play.

She wound up one of the mobiles-they both played Brahms Lullaby-and sat in the rocking chair to imagine herself nursing her babies. She put her arms on the armrests, rubbed her hands over the wood where it was showing the patina of age, and imagined the generations of women who had rocked their infants in the same chair before her. The antique bentwood rocker didn't really go with the pale ash floors, but Elliot had told her that one of his earliest memories was of his mother rocking him to sleep in it before things got bad with his father. He seldom spoke of his parents, and when he did, it was almost always in unpleasant terms; so when she saw him smiling nostalgically, his eyes shining with happiness, she knew the chair had to be in the nursery. It had taken a lot of shopping around to find the right furniture to help it fit in, but now, when she looked around, everything seemed just perfect.

She closed her eyes, rocked slowly in the chair, and hummed "Lullaby and Goodnight" along with the mobile. Joyful tears slid out from beneath her eyelashes. She never thought she could be so happy.

_Apartment of Neil Czarhyskinsky  
317 West 141st Street, Harlem  
4:41 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"I don't think he's coming back," Dani said, fidgeting in her seat.

"Relax," Elliot told her. "He's not going to pack all his stuff and then just leave it sitting there."

"Then where is he?" she asked him. "If I were running from the cops, I would try to get out of town as quick as I could, wouldn't you?"

Elliot nodded. "Yeah, but one of the reasons we catch the bad guys is that we're smarter than they are."

"Ok, then, Smart Guy, where is he?"

Elliot scratched his neck thoughtfully and said, "Well, his paycheck from that bodega couldn't have been very big, and he's not just running, he's moving. Could be he's trying to convince the landlord to give him back his security deposit now, or he's out looking for a moving van, or he's trying to find an alternate source of funds."

"You mean he's robbing people."

Elliot grinned. "Yeah. See? I told you we were smarter than the bad guys. You figured it out."

Not appreciating the humor at her expense, Dani gave him a death glare and flipped out her phone. "I'm gonna call into the station and have someone check the daily arrest reports and then check with our guy's landlord and see if he's been looking for his security deposit. Do you think it's worth the trouble to call moving companies?"

Elliot shrugged. "Odds are he needs the cash before he can rent a truck, and even if he doesn't, he'll probably show up here before we find the right rental agency. Maybe ask Cragen to have someone see what we can find within a ten- or fifteen-block radius."

"Ok, works for me," Dani replied, and hit the speed dial for the precinct.

"While you're doing that, I'm gonna call my daughter and ask her to check on Liv," Elliot told her, and he flipped his phone open, too.

Apartment of Elizabeth Stabler  
Main Street and 63rd Avenue, Queens  
4:45 P.M., October 28, 2011

Liz always checked the caller ID before she answered the phone because Laura, her roommate, had some weird friends that she didn't like to talk to. Recognizing the number immediately, she picked up the handset and said brightly, "Hi, Daddy!"

"Hello, Mr. Stabler," Laura called from the other room, and Liz realized she had been checking the caller ID in there.

"_Hi, Laura,"_ Elliot answered.

"He says hi," Lizzie told her and carried the phone back to her bedroom so she could have some privacy.

"_Does she have any new body piercings?"_

"Not where you'd want to look," Liz replied. "Are you calling from the delivery room?"

Elliot laughed. She had been asking him that question every time he called her for the last two weeks. She was almost as excited about the twins as he and Olivia.

"_Not yet," _he said. "_Liv isn't due for another week."_

"Oh, rats," she sighed. "So, what's up?"

"_Well, it looks like I'll be working late tonight," _he began, almost apologetically, "_and we're almost out of groceries. I was wondering if you could maybe take Olivia some of the basics, bread, cereal, and milk, maybe some fresh fruit, too."_

"Oh, Daddy, I LOVE you! I'll get the whole shopping list for her!"

"_Uh, ok, I love you, too sweetie, but why are you so excited about doing our grocery shopping?"_

"Laura and I are having our costume party tonight," she explained, "and we've been busy decorating all day. Now she's talking about going out to dinner with one of her friends, which means I'd be stuck with the last of the decorating and since she never comes home when she says she will, I'll be alone here with all of her freaky friends. She told them the party started at six, but she told me it started at eight, so no one I know will be showing up until eight."

"_So I just saved your butt, huh?"_

"You sure did," she replied. "And I can't thank you enough."

"_Just remember this when Liv and I need a babysitter," _he told her.

"You know I'll be happy to help any time," she said.

"_Yeah, I know that, and thanks, Sweetie. I love you."_

"Love you, too. Bye, Dad."

"_Bye."_

"Laura! Change in plans." Liz yelled down the hall to her roommate. "My dad's working late and my step-mom's out of groceries. I have to go shopping for her."

"What? Why can't she go herself?"

"Duh! She's nine months pregnant with twins and she isn't allowed to lift more than five pounds because she had some problems a while back," Liz said, grabbing the bag that had her costume in it. "I told you that before!"

"But we're not done decorating!" Laura complained.

"I am. Besides, the place looks great," Liz told her, and she wasn't lying. The apartment was eerily lighted with jack o' lanterns and skulls that had miniature twinkle bulbs flickering in their eyes like candles. Fake cobwebs hung over everything, even the punch fountain they had rented for the occasion. A pair of rubber bats hung from the ceiling fan and seemed to flutter about the room as the fan turned. With sound effects and a black light, the result was seriously creepy.

"What about the piñata?"

"I still say that's a bad idea," Liz said checking that her cell phone was charged as she headed to the door. "But if you insist on having it, Joe can hang it for you when he gets here. He won't even need a chair."

At six feet eight inches tall, Laura's friend Joe was often called on to change light bulbs and reach high shelves. He had already been warned to duck for the bats when he arrived at the party.

Slipping into her coat, she said, "Now, I have to go. My dad and step-mom are counting on me."

Laura sighed. "Ok. When will you be back?"

"When I'm finished," Liz said.

"You know, you never told about your costume."

Grinning mischievously, Liz replied. "I know. You'll see it when I get back."

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
5:04 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

_Olivia rocked slowly back and forth humming the lullaby softly to her baby as the mobile played. She felt so relaxed and contented. She never knew she could feel so much love. She'd never been so happy._

_A sudden chill passed through her, and things weren't so perfect anymore. She rocked a little faster, trying to comfort herself, and she began to sing aloud to mask the creeping sensation that there was something sinister in the house._

_Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top  
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.  
When the bough breaks . . ._

_She stopped singing and frowned. That was the wrong lullaby. She and Elliot had agreed that the image of an infant plummeting to the ground from the top of a tree was disturbing, so they had decided between themselves and informed all of their friends and family that they didn't want anything that played that lullaby in their home. It didn't have anything to do with being politically correct, but in their jobs they had both seen enough violence against children to be a little sensitive to the issue._

_So why was she hearing it now, and why hadn't the mobile stopped playing yet? _

_It was in a minor key, too, which made it creepy, and there was a ghastly, high-pitched wail in the background. It hurt her ears and made her head ache._

_She'd have Elliot take the mobile back to the store tomorrow. They still had the receipts for everything somewhere. She wanted to get up and turn it off, but for some reason, she couldn't open her eyes._

_She heard a shriek, followed by a hearty, terrified wail, and she called out. "I know, Sweetheart. I know, Honey. Mommy doesn't like that noise either. It's nasty music. She'll turn it off in a minute."_

_The music grew louder, and the baby cried louder to be heard over it. _

_Olivia struggled to open her eyes, and when she finally did, what she saw appalled and terrified her. The overhead light fixture strobed the room with black light. Gone were the pastel walls, replaced by lurid shades instead, blood red, flame yellow, electric blue, violent green, and fluorescent orange. And the pictures, oh the beautiful pictures! They had come to life in a most gory and perverse way. _

_Bo Peep was feasting on raw mutton with blood washing down her face spilling onto her clothes, her shiny, sharp little teeth bared as she readied for another bite. The still living sheep bleated piteously. Miss Muffet quivered and trembled as a tarantula the size of a Rottweiler sucked her dry. Jack's brains were exposed and a demented Jill was scooping them up by the handful, splattering them on the side of the well and laughing with glee. Little Boy Blue had been gored by a cow and his entrails trailed out of the picture frame and across the wall as the heifer galloped clumsily away._

_What had gone wrong?_

_She looked back toward the chair. Where was the baby she had been holding? When had it stopped crying?_

_The music was so loud in her head that she could barely think._

_She struggled toward the crib on her right, but it seemed as if her feet were stuck to the floor. The harder she tried to walk, the harder it became, and every time she made a little progress, the nursery seemed to stretch so the crib could retreat a little further. It was impossibly far away now, little more than a speck on the horizon._

_Suddenly, she was there, looking down into the crib at her infant daughter, completely shrouded in swaddling. At some point, without her noticing, the room had been cast into utter darkness, except for the light over the crib, and the mobile overhead was playing so loudly it rattled her teeth and shook her right down to the bones. She pulled the blanket away from the baby's head, and a tiny skull slowly turned its grinning little face toward her._

_Olivia was frozen in horror. She couldn't even scream it was so awful. She felt faint and clung to the crib rail to keep herself from collapsing. As she watched, open mouthed and terrified with tears streaming down her face, the tiny arms and legs pushed and kicked the blanket away._

_Her daughter was a living skeleton, her bleached bones shining bright white in a pool of darkness. The baby reached out to her, but she couldn't move, she couldn't bear to touch it. How had everything gone so wrong?_

_When she didn't pick it up, the skeleton started crying, with the loud, demanding cry of a cranky infant in the midst of pitching a fit. She knew she should pick it up and comfort it, cradle it to her breast, love it, but this was **not** her baby. This **could not be** her baby!_

_She turned to the other crib, but there was only blackness, blackness and music and that horrid, shrieking skeleton, and with a dreadful, sinking feeling, she realized that the moving crib had been a trap._

Olivia opened her eyes and gasped. Then for a moment she couldn't breathe. Finally, she took a deep breath and exhaled. Her face was wet with tears and the front of her shirt was soaked where they had dripped from her chin. Her hands ached, and she looked down to see that she was still clutching the armrests of the rocker. It took a conscious, deliberate effort to let go.

The nursery was back to normal, that beautiful, cheery place it had been when she, Rick, and Maureen had stood in the doorway admiring their work. There were no signs of blood and gore.

But the baby was still crying, emitting a thin, shrill wail again and again.

Olivia slapped the side of her head several times with the palm of her hand, trying to shake the noise loose, but it persisted. She could feel a hard sob, part fear, part frustration, bubbling up in her chest. One more smack, and she realized it was the phone ringing.

"Just the phone," she said aloud. She took and released another deep breath. "It's just the phone."

Now she felt like she was grounded back in reality.

"The phone is ringing," she said to herself, and realized she had to answer it.

With an effort she pushed herself out of the rocker and waddled to the bedroom. There was an extension in every room of the house except for the two bathrooms, because neither she nor Elliot was comfortable talking to their friends or colleagues while perched on the commode, and the nursery, because they had decided their time with the girls in that room would be sacred and was not to be interrupted by the telephone.

"Don't hang up, don't hang up," she pleaded with the caller. Snatching the handset, she shouted, "Hello?" and plopped down on Elliot's side of the bed.

"Hey, Liv, it's Liz."

"Oh, hi Lizzie, how are you?"

"Not bad. Laura and I have finished decorating for our costume party. How are you?"

Olivia tried to make her voice sound bright and cheerful, but didn't quite succeed. "Oh, I've had better days."

"Really? Are you ok, Liv? Is it time? Should I call Dad?"

"No! No, Lizzie, I'm fine." It was a lie, she knew, but a couple of bad dreams weren't reason to worry Elliot. He had enough on his mind already between his job and becoming a father again. "I'm just ready to have these babies."

Lizzie laughed, and Olivia breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least she had managed to convince her stepdaughter that she was ok. Now if she could just convince herself.

"Look, Dad called me and asked me to get groceries for you because he's gonna be working late. Do you have a list?"

Olivia felt something collapse inside her and she worked hard to suppress a sob. All she wanted right now was to feel safe in her husband's arms, but she knew what he was doing and how important it was. If she were in pain or physically ill, she wouldn't hesitate to call him, but a bad dream was no reason to have him pulled off a stakeout.

"Liv?"

"No, no I don't have a list yet. If you have a pencil, I can go through the cupboards right now and give you one."

"No, that's ok. I'm on my way down there because from what dad said, you're pretty low on supplies and I'm gonna need some cash or your ATM card to pay for it all."

"What?" Olivia tried to tease, "That honors scholarship doesn't pay for food?"

"As a matter of fact, it doesn't. It's only half tuition. It goes from the college to the college, and I never see a dime of it."

"Oh, poor thing," Olivia pretended to sympathize.

"Yeah, poor me," Liz agreed. "So, you'll have a list by the time I get there?"

"Sure will, Sweetie, and thanks." Elizabeth would never know how grateful Olivia was to have something to do to distract her from the weird things going on in her head.

"Any time! See you soon."

"Bye."

Olivia hung up the phone and left the bedroom. She impulsively pulled the nursery door shut as she walked by, and then carefully waddled down the steps.

"He's gonna get you!"

The maniacal laughter that accompanied the words this time chilled her right to the bone and made her tremble as she stood on the stairs. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing for several moments until she realized that her hands hurt. Unclenching her fists, she discovered that she had balled them up so tightly that her nails had drawn blood on both of her palms.

She knew Elliot would notice. For some reason, when they were sitting together on the couch watching TV, he loved to hold her hand, play with her fingers, and kiss her palm. She'd have to think of a way to explain it to him later. Right now she needed to bandage the wounds and then make out a grocery list for Liz.

There were bandages in the downstairs bathroom. She'd start there.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

* * *

**BONUS FEATURE: **Reread the nightmare sequence with musical accompaniment. Go to Amazon, select "Music" on the search engine, and type in "Halloween Sound Effects." Select the first album in the list, and play sample track thirteen (an appropriate number ;-) "Sleep Little Baby" over and over until you get to the end of the italics. My cat thinks it sounds like kittens crying and tries to comfort the speakers by laying on them and grooming them every time I play it! 


	8. Waiting

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Eight  
Waiting**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
5:39 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia restlessly paced the kitchen. Liz had just left with the grocery list and her ATM card and she was waiting for her to come back. She knew she should take care of the last of laundry, and while she didn't feel it was her responsibility, she thought it would be nice to finish organizing Elliot's closet for him; but she really didn't want to leave the relative security of the kitchen. She didn't really want to sit around and wait for more weird noises or another nightmare, either, so she needed to find something to do right where she was. In the fridge there were some furry strawberries and an icky brown apple that she wasn't going to eat now that she had let it sit all day. Who knows what else was lurking in the back behind the milk and grape juice. She could clean out the refrigerator.

As she stared at all of the stuff they had accumulated, she wondered what had happened to her to make her so fearful. She'd lived alone before, had lots of nightmares over the years, even had a couple of psychos stalking her. It had made her nervous, watchful, and cautious, but she'd never before been really _afraid_ to go anywhere or do anything she wanted.

She felt one of the babies shift, and immediately had her answer. She'd never before had another life, or in this case, _two _lives, so utterly dependent on her. Baiting a killer when she had only herself to worry about was a hell of a lot less scary than stepping into a dark room when she was taking that risk for her own children. Her cop's brain told her there was nothing there, nothing at all to be afraid of, but her mother's intuition told her better safe than sorry, and as irrational as it was, mother's intuition won out over cop's sense and logic.

She took the plate from breakfast, carried it over to the trash can and scraped the apple wedges and peanut butter off. Then she placed the plate in the sink until someone emptied the clean dishes out of dishwasher for her. She went back for the strawberries, and threw them away, carton and all. Deciding it was a waste of energy to walk back and forth to the trash can, she dragged it over to the fridge. It weighed more than five pounds, but she wasn't lifting it, so she figured she was ok, as long as Elliot didn't find out.

She had never kept much food in the fridge when she was single, and as far as she remembered from the time when they were waiting for the annulment, neither had Elliot. So why was it that they now had more than twice as much stuff crammed in the icebox as either of them had ever had when they lived alone?

She shifted half a step to the left so she could reach the sink, and she was ready to work. The fridge was directly in front of her, the sink was in front of her to the left, the trash can was immediately to her left, and the table was behind her to the right. All she had to do was grab, turn, and toss.

The milk, she knew, was still good. They had drunk some that morning. She put it on the table. Behind it was a carton of orange juice. According to the date stamped on the package, it was still good, but she knew that had a lot to do with how long it had been opened and how long it had been left sitting out. She opened it and peered inside. It wasn't _orange_ juice anymore, but a little bit brown. No need to smell or taste it to know it was spoiled. She dumped it in the sink and then crushed the carton and shoved it in the trash.

She sorted through the top two shelves in this fashion, noticing that, the closer things were to the front and the top, the more likely they were to still be good. The farther back and the farther down they were, the more likely it was that they would go down the sink or into the trash.

She pulled up a chair so she didn't have to bend over to work on the third shelf. It held salad dressing, jelly, ketchup, and barbecue sauce, things that never went bad either because they had incredible shelf life or they were used so frequently they didn't have time to spoil. The first two rows of jars and bottles went onto the table. Then came stuff of a more questionable nature.

She picked up a jar of olives, the salty green ones stuffed with pimientos. Why had they bought olives? They were half gone, so clearly she or Elliot had some use for them at one point, but she couldn't remember what it was. She didn't even bother to look at the date. They were brownish and icky looking, so she dumped the liquid in the sink and tossed the jar in the trash. Ordinarily, they recycled, but a lot of recyclable containers were going in the trash tonight. She didn't want a ton of uncontained spoiled food in the bag on the chance that it might leak or break open.

Next was a jar of nopalitos, the diced prickly pear cactus leaves. She knew exactly why they had bought those. Elliot had gone on a 'Let's try something new every time we go shopping' kick. It had been fun for a while, and the nopalitos had become a favorite hamburger condiment and salad topping that summer, but it had all come to a grinding halt when a funky little fruit from Southeast Asia with a name she couldn't remember had made him break out in hives.

At first it was funny and she had delighted in torturing him by trimming his nails short enough that he couldn't really scratch. She'd often had hives as a small child, probably due to anxiety; and whenever she broke out, her mother would cut her nails and file them right down to the quick. It was agony in a way, not being able to relieve an itch by scratching, but it prevented scars and skin infections. Then they called his doctor, who recommended over the counter antihistamines, but when the little pink pills hadn't worked their magic by nightfall, Olivia had sought to distract him from his discomfort under the covers. As they were kissing, her tongue discovered the bumps in his mouth. She'd used a flashlight to look down his throat and then made him get dressed so she could drive him to the ER. By the time they got there, his breathing was raspy and she was frantic. A shot of epinephrine had cured him in moments, but they had kept him for overnight observation, just in case.

That had ended their gastronomic adventures.

The nopalitos had been in the fridge for at least a year. She drained them and tossed them away like the olives.

She worked through a variety of pickles, sweet, dill, hot peppers, green tomatoes, and the like, and several relishes made of different fruits and veggies. She tossed out four containers of yogurt that had been shoved to the back, and something that only resembled hummus, but no longer was.

Then she found a mysterious, lonely little, perfectly round potato rolling around in a small Tupperware container. She had never seen such a perfectly spherical potato, and she couldn't figure out how they would have just the one left over. Usually, if that's all there was, she or Elliot would eat it just to have it gone. Then she noticed that it had a slightly yellowish hue. She pressed it with her thumb and it crumbled and stank.

"Dammit, Elliot," she cursed.

He loved hardboiled egg whites, but if he tried to eat the entire yolk whole, he wound up gagging. Usually, he diced them up into a potato or pasta salad, but this one had escaped. Olivia choked on the odor, put the lid back on the container and threw it in the trash. Then she moved over to the sink and washed the stink off her hands.

As she turned the water off and dried her hands, she felt ice slipping down her back. Elliot wasn't home, but there was no mistaking what she was hearing. Someone was playing the piano in the family room.

Her heart started beating double time to keep up with the eerie rhythm, and her breathing came fast and ragged. Her palms were sweaty and her limbs were trembling and she nearly choked on the bitter taste of panic.

Dammit all to hell! She was _not_ going to be afraid in her own home. She was either going to find the source of the creepy music or convince herself that it was just her imagination and learn to ignore it.

She wiped her slick palms on her slacks and reached into a drawer to get the biggest, sharpest knife she could find. Ordinarily, she would prefer to go upstairs and get her gun instead, but the stairs ended right at the entrance to the family room, and there was no way she could get to the second floor without passing it. She opened a cupboard and took out a heavy frying pan. It probably weighed more than five pounds, but it wasn't too heavy to swing and it made a hell of a good club.

She wasn't as light on her feet as she would have liked, but she managed to move quietly across the kitchen. If there was an intruder, she had the advantage of knowing where all the furniture and light switches were. She stood against the wall outside of the family room and reached around to flip on the light. Then she glanced around the door frame quickly, and, seeing nothing, moved cautiously into the room. She held the knife in front of her, ready to cut or stab, and the pan to her side, ready to swing.

She stood in the middle of the carpet looking around. The music was faint now, so faint she had to hold her breath to hear it, and when she did, she couldn't tell if it was coming from inside her head or outside of it. She opened the hinged top of the old upright piano and looked inside. There was nothing suspicious. She looked in the storage compartment of the piano bench and saw nothing but music books. She shuffled through the bookshelf and peered into the potted plants, turned over the cushions and looked behind the blinds, but she couldn't conduct a thorough search in her physical condition.

And the music had stopped anyway.

Tears of fear and frustration stung her eyes, and she wished she had asked Elliot to stay home this morning. Dejected and forlorn, she turned and reluctantly headed back to the kitchen. As she approached the door, maniacal laughter erupted behind her. With a startled shout, she threw the knife and the pan at whatever it was, bolted out the door, and slammed and locked it behind her.

_Apartment of Neil Czarhyskinsky  
317 West 141st Street, Harlem  
5:57 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"There's our boy," Elliot said adjusting his rearview mirror for a better look. "Black parka, brown pants."

Dani angled her head to get a better view from the passenger side mirror. "Got him," she confirmed. "How do you want to handle this?"

"Let's try to approach him casually, get close before we identify ourselves," he said. "But whatever we do, let's get him before he decides to run."

"Right," Dani agreed, and before he knew it, she was out of the car and walking up to Czarhyskinsky.

"Excuse me, sir," she said as she played with her earring, "do you know where there's a gas station around here?"

"Hey, I told you I could find one," Elliot shouted at her.

Czarhyskinsky turned to look at him, and Dani grabbed his arms and slapped the cuffs on him.

"Neil Czarhyskinsky, I am placing you under arrest for the rape of Julianne Beiber," she began. "You have the right to remain silent . . ."

Grinning, Elliot said, "I caught the signal that time."

Dani smiled back and nodded as she continued Mirandizing their prisoner.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
6:17 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia sat at the kitchen table surrounded by food and condiments, breathing deeply with her eyes closed. She had finally got her heart rate down and had talked herself out of calling Elliot at work. It was only noises after all, and the alarm would tell her if someone was trying to enter the house. She could hold on until he got home, and then she would tell him what had happened and they would figure out something together.

Maybe she could spend her days at the Marchesi's. Maybe he would take off work until the twins came. Maybe he would take her to the hospital and they would induce labor so they could start her on anti-psychotics.

She tried to laugh, but she wasn't sure she was joking.

There was a knock at the front door, and all she did was open her eyes. Her fear response had been so over stimulated that it didn't startle her; but she had to go through the family room to get there, and that thought made her heart begin to pound just a little harder.

She got to the foot of the stairs and unlocked the family room door. Right now, one thing she loved about this old house they had bought was that every room had a door she could close and lock. Reaching around the corner, she found the light switch. The room was clear, except for the pan and knife she had thrown in there earlier. She slid them under the sofa out of sight and finally got to the front door.

"I hope you're in the mood for Chinese food," Kathleen said with a smile. "Liz called and told me you were out of groceries and Daddy was working late. Since one of my favorite restaurants is in the neighborhood, I figured I'd get take out for the both of us. I told them no MSG. I didn't know whether you had to give that up for the babies, but I figured it was better safe than sorry. Are you all right?"

"Just glad to see you," Olivia said, giving her stepdaughter a peck on the cheek in greeting.

_16th Precinct  
Special Victims Unit  
6:34 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Look, Officer Stabler . . ." Neil Czarhyskinsky began, but he was cut off by Elliot.

"Detective."

"Excuse me?"

"Detective Stabler," Elliot corrected him.

"Oh, uh, sorry," Czarhyskinsky said with a wry smile, "_Detective_ Stabler, I would be happy to help you if I had any idea what you were talking about, but the fact is, I don't know any Julianne Beiber."

"That's ok, Mr. Czarhyskinsky, she knows you." Elliot deliberately mispronounced the first name, making the first syllable _care _instead of _zar._

"That's Czarhyskinsky," the man corrected him, "like the Czars of Russia."

"Oh, uh, sorry," Elliot apologized, but his voice and expression were insincere, making it clear that the slight had been intentional. "Anyway, my partner is assembling a lineup right now, and as soon as Mrs. Beiber identifies you, we'll get a court order for your DNA. I'm just giving you a chance to come clean before that happens. Maybe if you do, the DA will go easier on you."

Czarhyskinsky tried to smile arrogantly, but he only managed the grimace of a man who knew he was in serious trouble.

"Perhaps I should have a lawyer," he said.

Elliot returned a cool, superior smile. "Perhaps you should."

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
6:43 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Is that all you're going to eat?" Kathleen asked when Olivia pushed her soup away with a sigh.

"Kat, it's delicious, especially the hot and sour soup, but I can't eat another bite right now," Olivia told her. "The babies are taking up too much room. If you put it on the top shelf of the fridge, I promise I will finish it tomorrow."

Kathleen gave her a concerned look, but shrugged and did as she was told. She had already wiped down the top two shelves for Liv and put the food she was keeping back in the refrigerator. Before she could offer to finish the job, there was a knock at the back door. Kathleen went to answer it and found Elizabeth standing there with a half a dozen grocery bags.

"There's more in the car," she told her older sister.

Kathleen left to get the rest of the groceries, and Liz placed her bags on the table to unpack. It took the girls about thirty-five minutes to put the groceries away, empty the dishwasher, and finish cleaning the fridge, with Olivia protesting all the time that they had already done enough for her. While they worked, they coaxed her into having a cup of Postum and some ginger snaps that Liz had added to the grocery list because she knew her dad liked them.

Once they finished, Kat made herself a cup of hot chocolate and sat at the table with Olivia munching cookies while her sister went into the bathroom to change into her costume for the party. They sat there quietly for several minutes until Kathleen finally asked, "Olivia, are you ok?"

Liv nodded. "Of course I am. Why?"

Kathleen shrugged. "I don't know. You just don't seem like yourself."

How did she explain to her stepdaughter that she'd been hallucinating and having nightmares? How did she explain that she had scared herself half out of her mind? She just couldn't do it. She had to wait for Elliot. He would know how to deal with this. She knew it was all in her head anyway, she just had to keep it together until he got home.

She rubbed a hand over her tummy and gave Kathleen what she hoped was a tired smile.

"These two are just sapping a lot of my energy, I guess," she lied. "I suppose I ought to get used to it. Once they're born, they're gonna keep me busy for a long time."

"Yeah, but eventually they'll be old enough to have chores, and then you can put them to work," Kathleen reminded her.

Liv chuckled, it sounded hollow to her ears. "Sounds fair."

Then her blood ran cold as eerie, reedy music floated down the hall. One look at Kathleen told her she wasn't the only one to hear it, and despite her fears, her heart leapt for joy. She wasn't going mad after all.

Just as suddenly, her heart sank as Elizabeth came dancing into the kitchen in her Halloween costume. Her hair was up and she was wearing an old bikini from two summers ago, if Liv remembered correctly. It had been adorned with multicolor sequins on both breasts and on the _Vs _of fabric at the front and back of the bottoms, and numerous colorful chiffon scarves dangled from the bottom of the bikini top and the waist of the bottoms. There was a gold lariat necklace around her neck with sparkling crystals at the ends, and she wore long, dangling earrings to match it. A string of glittering beads wrapped around each ankle and trailed its way down her foot to where it was secured between her big toe and the one next to it, like a flip flop sandal with no sole. Another swatch of filmy fabric covered the lower half of her face, but it completely failed to hide what looked like a gold stud in her left nostril. She didn't even attempt to cover the crystal in her navel.

Her hips swayed with the music and her arms made sinewy, serpentine motions. One by one the veils came off and she let them float to the floor as she danced. The music got faster and faster, and by the end of the dance, her hips were practically vibrating. She threw off the last veil, the one covering her face, and dropped to one knee, her arms thrust up in the air and her breasts heaving as she breathed heavily.

For a moment the whole house was quiet, then Kathleen spoke.

"Oh, my God, Liz."

Elizabeth grinned. "What do you think?"

"Dad is going to _kill_ you."

"The nose stud and belly button ring are pasted on," Liz said.

"That's _not_ why he's going to kill you," Kat said.

"Where did you learn to belly dance?" Olivia asked.

"I had to get a PE credit," Liz told her, "and this dance class counted as a humanities course, too, so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. I almost dropped it when I found out there was a unit on pole dancing, but I thought, what the heck, it could be fun some day when I find the right guy."

Kathleen rolled her eyes and moaned.

"Elizabeth," Olivia said sternly, using her full name to give her words more weight.

"Yes?"

"Never, _ever_ tell your father that." She could not have been more serious.

"I won't, but what do you think of the costume?"

Kathleen and Olivia shared a look and then a shrug.

"It's great," Kat told her.

"But if anyone records your dance, don't let them show your dad."

Liz shook her head. "Oh, I won't."

She began gathering her veils and tucking them into her costume again. "It's not really authentic, but I wanted it to be sexy," she said.

"Well, you've achieved that," Kat told her. "Maybe a little too well. Be prepared to slap at some wandering hands."

"Hey, I took karate too," Liz reminded her with a mischievous, "I can break them."

She turned to Olivia next and said, "Unless you need something else, I should probably be going. I am one of the hostesses of the party after all."

Liv shook her head and said, "I'm fine. You go have fun."

Kat looked at her and said, "Dad would probably like one of us to stay with you until he gets home."

Liv would have liked that, too, but she'd inconvenienced so many people already. She wasn't going to spoil Kathleen's evening just because she was afraid of the dark. Besides, if there was something going on, she'd just as soon have the girls out of the line of fire. If she weren't so enormously pregnant, it would be easier to take care of herself, but at least with the twins, she still had only one body to look after. If Kat stayed the night, her worries would double.

"No, that's not necessary. I'll be all right until your dad gets here."

"But, Liv," Kat tried to argue.

"No, Kat, I mean it," she insisted. "It's Friday night, you're young. I am sure you had better plans. Go and enjoy yourself."

"Only if you're sure."

"I'm positive," Liv told her. "My health is fine and I haven't had any medical problems since the doctor ordered me off work. If my water breaks during the night, I will have plenty of time to dial 911 and call your dad. I won't need a babysitter until these girls are born," she said placing a protective hand over her stomach, and hoping her words sounded convincing.

"People have done my chores for me all day, so you can trust me not to overdo it. All I have planned for this evening is a small bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream and an hour in front of the television watching that new show about the computer geeks who track terrorists through their online activities."

"_IT_?" Kathleen said, pronouncing each letter. "I'm surprised you watch it. Isn't that what you've done since you and dad started dating? Is it really like they show it on TV?"

The day after she and Elliot had first made love, the two of them had gone to Cragen and told him one of them needed to be transferred out of the unit. It had been awkward and embarrassing, but they knew their relationship was serious and they didn't ever want to put their friend and captain in the position of having to explain why he either hadn't known about it or had known and decided to ignore it. At first it had been difficult not seeing each other across the desk every day, but department policy was that people who were intimately involved could not serve together. Olivia had done well in computer crimes, so within a week, she was moved back there; and Elliot had gotten along with Dani Beck once he got used to her, so it made sense to call her back to the SVU.

Olivia shrugged. "Yes and no. Most of the technical scenes are pretty true to life, but some of the tools they use are still purely fictional while others are already out of date. My job wasn't nearly so bloody, either, and I'm sorry, but if I were raiding a suspected terrorist cell, I'd have an army of cops in riot gear with shotguns and teargas go in first!"

"Oh, yeah," Kathleen agreed, "we were talking about that at work last week. How stupid do the producers think we are? When a building blows up with people in it, someone is going to get hurt or at least traumatized. It was just ridiculous to have Edmund and Lou going back to work the next day with nothing but a few scratches!"

"Watch the dates on the screen," Liv told her. "They were off for a week, but I have to tell you, one time, someone missed a typo, and they conducted a search of the suspect's home a week before they identified the suspect."

"No kidding."

"It was . . . uh . . ." Olivia closed her eyes in thought. "It was the episode called 'Worm,' where they try to cripple the airline industry by hacking into the air traffic controllers' computer systems."

"I'll have to look for that sometime," Kathleen replied. "I think I still have it on tape. I record it when I go out, because it's usually a good show. Everybody at work wants Edmund and Lou to hook up, but I keep telling them, if they do, someone's gonna have to leave the show because partners aren't allowed to fraternize like that."

"Oh, if they do, it will be the end of the series," Liz said as she returned to the kitchen with her CD player and clothes in a bag and wearing her coat over her costume. "That sexual tension is why half the world tunes in to watch and the other half tapes it! As soon as they hop in the sack, the anticipation is gone."

Looking at her sister, she asked, "Are you taping it tonight?"

"Yes, why?"

"I want to see it, but Laura is showing horror movie DVDs for the party," she said. "Call me tomorrow and I'll come over and we can watch it together."

Kat laughed. "If you're not too hung over from the party."

"I'm nineteen," Liz said. "Underage, remember?"

"That never stopped you before," Kat teased.

"Ok, I'm not hearing this conversation," Olivia tried to interrupt them.

"At least I do my partying at home, Miss DUI," Liz replied. It was getting ugly now.

"Enough!" Liv snapped before Kathleen could respond. "Elizabeth, your sister was seventeen and hanging with the wrong crowd when that happened. It's over. You need to apologize."

She seldom took a firm hand with her stepchildren, mostly because they were good kids, but also because they were practically grown when she became a prominent part of their lives. So, when she jumped in now, they both knew she was serious.

"I'm sorry, Kat," Liz said sincerely. "That was uncalled for."

Kathleen nodded, accepting the apology.

"Kathleen, while your sister is underage and knows your father would not approve of her drinking, she is legally and adult and the decision and its consequences are hers," Liv said. "It isn't your place to call her out for her behavior, do you understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, Liz."

Liz and Olivia nodded, then Olivia turned to Elizabeth again. "Lizzie, Sweetie, as far as I'm concerned, it's none of my business whether you choose to drink or not, but I'm not going to save you're behind if you get busted either, understand?"

Liz nodded. "Yeah."

"Good, now, I know I just said it was none of my business, but I want you to make me three promises."

"O-ok, what are they?"

Olivia wasn't sure Elliot would appreciate her giving the girls advice about safe boozing, and she didn't know if Kathy would have done it herself; but they were young and liked to go to parties and clubs with their friends, so she figured someone ought to.

"First, don't let anyone drink and drive, ok?"

"We don't," Liz said. "Anyone who drives to the party has to turn in their keys."

"Good. Also, if someone drinks until they pass out, you have to get them to the emergency room right away, even if it gets you and them in trouble," Liv said. "It could be alcohol poisoning, and involuntary manslaughter charges are a lot worse than an underage drinking citation."

Liz nodded. "Ok, I promise, but we always cut people off before they get that far."

Olivia smiled. "That's good, but you don't always catch them in time. Last thing, never, ever, for any reason let your drink out of your sight. If you do, dump it and get a fresh one. I know your guests are your and Laura's friends, but that doesn't mean you know them as well as you think you do."

Elizabeth gave her that same lopsided smile that Elliot did when he thought she was being a little ridiculous.

"You must think I'm pretty naïve," she said. "Everybody knows that."

"I think you're young," Olivia said. "There are a lot of experiences you haven't had the opportunity to learn from yet, and that is one I hope you never get to have. There is some advice that is so important that it bears repeating, so, will you promise me? Don't leave your drink unattended."

Liz smiled. "I won't. I never do."

Olivia sighed and nodded. "Good, off with you then, and have fun."

Looking at Kathleen, she said, "You too, and if you go to karaoke night, sing something for me while you're there."

Reluctantly, Kathleen picked her coat up off the back of the chair where she had hung it when she arrived.

"Only if you're sure you'll be ok alone tonight."

"I am," Liv said with a certainty she didn't feel. "Go."

They exchanged goodbye hugs and kisses, the kind of affection Olivia had always envied until she became part of a family, and then the girls left her to face the night alone.

She looked around the kitchen and realized she had nothing left that she could do. It was either go to sleep or watch TV.

_IT_ started in a few minutes. Maybe she could escape into that for a little while. Maybe the fantasy would make her feel better.

There was a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream in the freezer calling her name.

She crossed the kitchen to the stairs and turned the light on at the bottom landing. She climbed them tentatively, her ears highly attuned to every sound in the house, listening for anything that didn't belong. At the top of the steps, she crossed the hall, reached into the master bedroom, and turned on the light.

So far so good.

She crossed the bedroom quickly, got the lock box off her closet shelf, worked the combination, and got out her .38 and the box of bullets. Then she hurried out of the room and back to the safety of the kitchen, leaving the light on and the open box on the bed in her haste.

Downstairs in the kitchen, she loaded the gun and put the remaining bullets in her pocket.

There were three TVs in the house. The big screen was in the family room. No way was she going in there again tonight. The one from her apartment was upstairs in the guest room, where Elliot often wound up spending the night when work preyed on his mind and denied him sleep. She wasn't going back upstairs, either.

She put the gun down on the table, got the Cherry Garcia out of the freezer, took off the lid and stuck a spoon in it, picked up the gun, and made her way to the den, leaving every light on as she went through the house.


	9. The Fun House

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Nine  
The Fun House**_

_16th Precinct  
Special Victims Unit  
7:54 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"_I'm sorry, Daddy, but you know how stubborn she is. I figured it would be worse to upset her than leave her alone."_

"It's ok, Kathleen," Elliot replied. "I'll just be sure to call and check on her every so often."

He did that anyhow, but he had really wanted someone there with Olivia this close to her due date. Still, he knew he was probably just being a worrywart, and he couldn't be mad with his kids for doing what their step-mom had told them to do.

"_Do you really think she's ready to give birth?"_

"I don't know," he admitted. "She isn't due for another week, but she was awfully restless this morning."

"_Mo complained about a backache before she went into labor," _Kathleen remembered. "_Did Olivia have a backache?"_

"She never mentioned one," Elliot said, "but she is pretty stoic, so there's no reason to assume she would tell me."

"_Rick told me they finished the nursery today. Could that be the nesting instinct?" _she asked hopefully. She wasn't as giddy as Elizabeth over the whole pregnancy thing, but she was getting just as excited as the rest of them.

"You've been surfing the net looking at pregnancy sites, haven't you?" Elliot chuckled. "Yes, that could be nesting, but a woman can do that any time during her pregnancy."

"_Well, I think you should go home and be with her, just in case," _Kathleen said bossily.

"Oh, you don't want to upset her by staying, but you want me to walk out on an interrogation and face her wrath," he said. "Do you have any idea how upset she would be to know I left a job unfinished just to hang out with her because I thought she _might _be going into labor soon?"

"_So, what are you gonna do?" _she demanded.

"Call and check in on her every hour or so, just like I usually do when I have to work late."

"_Well, then, I think you should call her now, before IT starts," _she advised him.

"I will, as soon as we say goodbye," he told her in a patient tone.

"_Ok, then, good bye." _She sounded like she was trying to rush him off the phone.

"Kathleen?"

"_Yeah?"_

"I love you," he said, amused at her exasperation.

"_I love you, too, Daddy," _she said, he voice going all soft for a moment. "_Now hang up and call Olivia!"_

"Yes, ma'am," he chuckled, but she was already gone.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
7:58 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia jumped slightly when the phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and saw that it was the precinct. Praying that it was Elliot calling to say he'd be home soon, she answered it excitedly.

"Hello?"

"_Hello, Gorgeous!"_

"Gorgeous? Who's that?" she laughed. It was easy and natural for the moment because she was so relieved to hear his voice.

"_How has your day been?"_ he asked.

This wasn't right. He was supposed to be saying he was on his way home.

"Oh, all right," she responded noncommittally. "I've been missing you all day." She wouldn't ask him to come home. She had promised herself when she got married that she would never make him choose between her and the job and she would never make him feel guilty for working hard to close a case.

When he didn't say anything about when he was coming home, she asked, "How has your day gone?"

"_We got our guy,"_ he said, "_but it turns out our victim and her husband have gone to their cabin in the Adirondacks for the weekend. They're on their way back so she can do a lineup, but Dani's looking for a way to get the court order for his DNA before then. He lawyered up almost immediately, so a confession is probably out of the question."_

"So, I guess you're staying until you close the case, huh?" She tried not to sound upset, but she really wanted him home.

"_Yeah, I think so," _he said. "_Unless you need me now. Do you need me to come home?"_

Yes, oh, God yes. "No, I'm just watching TV and eating Ben and Jerry's."

"_Ok, then. As long as you're sure you're ok."_

"Yes, I'm ok," she insisted, and hoped he didn't hear the lie in her voice. "Finish what you're doing and I'll see you in the morning."

"_All right, then, I should be home in time to make you pancakes for breakfast,"_ he said, "_unless something totally blindsides us."_

"I'll be waiting. Why don't you get some chocolate chips and Cool-Whip on the way?" she asked, trying to convince him she was fine.

"_So, you're saying you want chocolate chip pancakes, are you?"_

"Of course. Why else would I ask you to get them?"

"_What if everything's closed when I get through here?"_

There were several twenty-four hour markets on the way from the station to home. She knew he was teasing her, and she tried to tease back. "Then you're going to have to spend the entire weekend with a pregnant woman with an unsatisfied craving for chocolate chip pancakes with Cool-Whip."

"_Oh, the horror!_ _I guess I better finish up quick . . .hold on a sec, will you?"_

He must have covered the mouthpiece with his hand, because she could only hear muffled voices. The words were indistinguishable. Then she heard faintly, "_Call Novak and get a court order for DNA then do some digging and see if we can prove he lived in the rest of those cities."_

"_Munch and Fin are checking out his prior addresses and Casey's already on her way to see Judge Ridenour."_

"_Ok, then go offer to get him a coffee or something. Make him think we are sucking up and trying to get him to cooperate because we've got nothing. Then we'll hit him with this stuff right before we tell him about the court order for DNA. I'll be there in a couple of minutes."_

She heard Dani's voice, but missed what she was saying this time.

"_Oh, and I wanna see if we can get someone from the M.E.'s office to collect the DNA here. I want this son of a bitch to know that, not only have we got him by the balls, but we can twist them any time we want."_

Olivia heard the change in sound when he brought the receiver back to his ear and she said, "Sounds like you got him."

"_Yep._ _He's been a busy boy. DNA came back, and it matches open cases in a dozen other cities,"_ Elliot said. "_Dani made some calls, and as other departments started faxing us files, all the composite drawings looked like our guy."_

"Good for you," Olivia said. ""I'll want to hear all about it in the morning."

"_Ok, Sweetheart, I'll see you then."_

"Love you."

"_You, too._ _Sweet dreams."_

"Good night," she said, praying that, if she did fall asleep, she wouldn't dream at all.

_16th Precinct  
Special Victims Unit  
8:21 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Elliot looked in his folder and made sure he had the list Dani had typed up for him. It listed the cities where Czarhyskinsky had lived and the names of his victims. Dani's folder was much thicker. It contained the same list plus headshots of the victims and police composite drawings of their attacker. All of the drawings bore an eerie similarity to Julianne Beiber's sketch of Neil Czarhyskinsky.

"So, are we ready to do this?"

Dani nodded.

He looked at Munch. "We have an order for his DNA?"

"Casey called about five minutes ago. She's on her way."

Looking at Fin he asked, "Is someone coming from the M.E.'s office."

Fin nodded. "Warner herself."

Elliot grinned. "Good. She can be pretty damned intimidating when she wants to be."

"Not that I have any problem with it," Munch began, "but why not just give the guy's lawyer the file and tell him we've got the DNA order? Why do you want to screw with him so bad?"

"Because he's an arrogant little prick who thinks he's gotten away with thirty-six rapes in a dozen different cities . . ."

"More than a hundred if you believe the stats on the rapes that go unreported," Dani interjected.

"Right," Elliot agreed, "and one murder that we know of. I want him to know we are the ones who nailed his ass, and I want it to hurt."

Munch nodded. "Sounds good to me."

"Ok, then. Have Casey and Warner wait until I offer him another chance to confess. Then send them in right away."

"Got it," Fin agreed. Ordinarily he didn't like to get all theatrical with his interrogations, but he was on the same page with Elliot this time. He also knew that when it hit the papers, and a case this big would definitely hit the papers, Elliot would make sure people knew it was a team effort, unlike some guys he had worked with who farmed the scut work out to anyone who was gullible enough to do it and then took all the glory for themselves.

Elliot met Dani's gaze, she nodded, and they went into the interrogation room. Elliot took the seat facing their suspect, and Dani crossed the room and leaned against the window sill. Both of them tried to look frustrated and a little peeved with each other as if they had come up with nothing.

"So, Neil. You don't mind if I call you Neil, do you, I just don't want to mess up your last name again," Elliot began as he nodded an acknowledgment to the public defender who had come to represent the suspect.

"I don't mind at all, Elliot," Czarhyskinsky paused before tacking his name on the end of the statement and then grinned almost as if it was a four-letter word.

Elliot returned the same grin and asked, "Did you like living in Bakersfield?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"California, four years ago, you raped three women there," Elliot said helpfully.

"I . . . I don't know what you're talking about," Neil stammered.

"Maybe this will refresh your memory," Dani said, and she placed three photos on the table before him. "Dolores Hernandez, Sharon Beane, and Connie Martinez. You remember them now?"

Neil shook his head. "I've never seen these women before in my life."

Dani put the composite sketch from their descriptions of their attacker on the table and said, "Funny, they've all see you."

Neil folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. "I have one of those faces. A lot of people look like me."

Elliot nodded as he glanced into his folder. "Yeah, but most of them try to hide it, especially when they're traveling across the country raping women." Looking to Dani, he asked, "Flagstaff was next, wasn't it?"

She nodded. "Yep, four women."

She dealt the photos out on the table like cards. "Angela Newman, Martha Cussler, Loretta Sweetwater, and Vicki Grainger."

Adding the composite to the pile, she said, "And they all saw you, too. You're not very smart, are you, letting all these women see your face?"

"Ms. Sweetwater was assaulted on Tohono O'Odham lands, Neil," Elliot said locking eyes with the suspect.

Neil shrugged. "So?"

"So, that's a federal crime. You won't be facing the Arizona local authorities for that one. You'll be tried by the U.S. Attorney's office."

"Except that I didn't do anything," Neil insisted.

"Yeah, whatever." Elliot shrugged as if he really didn't care.

He glanced at Dani and she said, "Provo was next."

He nodded. "Utah. Right. What have you got against Mormons?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Neil said, but his words lacked conviction.

"Well, you raped six women there," Elliot said, "more than in any other city, and they were all Mormon. It'll be kind of hard to explain that coincidence, even in Utah."

"I Googled hate crime statutes in Utah," Dani said to Elliot, "and they just put a new tougher statute into effect two years ago. It's the third time in twenty years they've changed the law to make it more specific and stiffen penalties. Now, for a hate crime, the judge can sentence you to up to double the maximum time for each offense."

Elliot shrugged. "Lucky you, you dodged a bullet there."

"Not really. After May first, the judge _must_ consider the hate crime enhancement guidelines, but for crimes committed before May first of this year, he _may _consider them. I think, for these six, pious Mormon women, he will," Dani said, tossing the stack of six pictures down in front of their suspect and his attorney.

"Of course, it might not matter anyway," Elliot said.

Neil almost looked hopeful, but he was trying too hard to be cool. "Really?"

"Yeah, rape in Utah carries a life sentence." He smiled, as if he was pleased that he could be so helpful and informative.

"Detectives, is there a point to all of this?" the public defender asked sounding exasperated.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to it," Elliot said impatiently. "Hey, Dani, where'd he go next?"

"He did two women in Boise, four in Des Moines, and two in Minneapolis." As she spoke, she tossed the photos on the table for Neil and his attorney to look at. "And then it was St. Louis."

"Oh, yeah, St. Louis," Elliot said with a shit-eating grin. "You only did one there, but you screwed up, you dumb shit, and beat her to death."

"Doing life in Utah is looking pretty good, now, isn't it?" Dani asked as she dropped the picture of the dead woman, Gabby McLaughlin, onto the table.

"Then it was Little Rock, Memphis, and Cincinnati," Elliot said.

More pictures fell onto the table. "Eleven more girls brings your total to thirty-three," Dani said.

"Plus the three here in New York," Elliot added, "where you screwed up again and went after someone who knew you."

This time Dani handed the photos over to the lawyer.

"And have you gotten to the point yet, Detectives?" he asked, knowing the best things he could do no was get his client a deal and avoid extradition to Missouri.

Elliot shrugged. "A trial is expensive and time consuming. I'm giving you one more chance to confess and save us all the time and trouble of going to court. I happen to know the DA in charge of Special Victims would appreciate that and might be inclined to give you a deal. Of course once we go to the trouble of collecting and processing your DNA, all bets are off. So, what do you say? Fess up for us and get this over with."

"I . . . I need some time to think about it," Neil said, clearly shaken now.

"Yeah, well, you better make up your mind before the order for the DNA gets here," Elliot told him. "Once we spend that kind of time and resources on you, the shows over. The DA will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."

There was a knock on the door and Melinda Warner poked her head in. "I have a court order here for a DNA sample from a Neil . . . uhhh . . ."

"Czarhyskinsky," Elliot said, deliberately botching the name again. Grinning, he turned to Neil and said, "Times up!"

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
9:17 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Olivia sat hunched up and clutching her gun trembling on the couch in the den as she tried to quell her panic, stop her tears, and figure out what the hell to do. The nightmare had started about halfway through _IT_ when the television went on the blink. She'd flipped through the channels and found the same electronic snow on all of them. Then the lights had gone out. She waited a moment to see if they would come back on, and when they didn't she figured some driver had hit an electrical pole somewhere in the area. She picked up the phone to report the outage, and found it was dead.

Then the noises had started. First it was the breathing.

_In . . . out . . . in . . . out. _

It kept up for so long and got so loud that she swore she could see the walls flexing and the drapes stirring with every breath.

_In . . . out . . . in . . . out_

Despite her best efforts, her own breathing kept falling into time with the breathing of the house, and though the respirations were slow and methodical, her heart was galloping away in her chest.

_In . . . out . . . in . . ._

When the house stopped breathing, she did, too, for a moment. Then there was a scream of lunatic laughter, like an evil being that took perverse pleasure in her fear and paralysis.

_He's gonna get you! He's gonna get you! _

_The Boogeyman is coming._

_He's gonna get you!_

She couldn't call for help because the phone was dead. She hadn't even seen her cell phone in months. She had stopped charging it when the doctor signed her off work because that was all she used it for anyway. Elliot wouldn't be home until morning. They'd sold her car a few weeks ago because it was the older of the two, and were planning to buy a minivan once she and the twins were ready to travel. In her present condition, she couldn't even run to safety.

_Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . _

The groan rattled her bones. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. Was it all in her head?

_Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . thump . . ._

There was a stranger in her house. How could there be a stranger in her house? The alarm was supposed to warn her when someone came through the door. It had its own battery back up in case of power outages. It should have warned her.

_MeeeOWWWWWWW!_

Cats fought in the alley behind the house all the time, but that hadn't come from the alley.

_Grrr . . . Carrunch! . . . Clack . . . Rattle . . .Snap . . . Grrrr . . .Click . . . Slurp . . .Grrrrr!_

It sounded like a pack of dogs was making a quick meal of the poor cat.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

Oh, God, it knew her name! The tears she'd been fighting off for so long now finally spilled over. It wasn't kids playing in the street. It wasn't air currents in the house. It wasn't a trick of her imagination. Some . . . thing was after her, and it knew her name!

_He's gonna get you!_

That creepy lullaby from the nursery was playing, and she heard a baby crying. The piano was playing its own eerie melody, making an ugly harmony with the lullaby. She sat there weeping in terror, afraid to run because she still didn't know where the threat was coming from and the worst thing she could do was run right into it.

_Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick . . ._

She closed her eyes, tears still streaming down her face, and began to chant in time with the clock, "Please, God, let me wake up! Please, God, let me wake up! Please, God, let me wake up!" Soon her prayer degenerated to terrified sobs.

_16th Precinct  
Special Victims Unit  
9:39 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

"Elliot, could you step into my office, please?" Cragen called across the squad room.

"I just need five minutes to finish this report, Cap," Elliot replied.

Czarhyskinsky had elected not to make a deal, which meant he was going to trial. Elliot knew he had done it to try to postpone facing the capital murder charges in Missouri, so he had gotten Dani to call her contact down there and give him a heads up that they needed to start working on their extradition paperwork. It only gave them a few hours lead time because as soon as the information was entered into the system, departments all over the country would know Czarhyskinsky had been caught, but it would be enough to ensure that his next trial after New York would be for murder in St. Louis.

"No, Detective, now," Don commanded.

Elliot looked up at Dani and frowned. Cragen didn't sound pissed, but he wasn't pissing around, either. He shrugged, saved the document he was working on, and strolled across the squad room and into the captain's office.

Don shut the door behind him, waved him into a seat, and took his own chair behind his desk. There were two other people already in the office, a Eurasian-looking woman who was probably in her early thirties, and a lean, lanky man a little older than Elliot with a graying buzz cut and a weathered face. Elliot had seen them walk in a few minutes ago, but officials from other agencies were always coming to see the captain about various matters, so he had thought nothing of it.

"Detective Elliot Stabler, meet Inspector Miali Palmer of the Ottawa Police Services Fugitive Squad and U.S. Marshal Wade Houser of the New York-New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force," Don said very officially. "They're here with some information for you."

Elliot shook their hands, and then frowning, said, "If this is about Neil Czarhyskinsky,

I appreciate anything you can give me, but our DA's not gonna let him leave New York until she's had her chance at him in court. Then, he's probably gonna go to St. Louis next because they've got him on a murder beef."

The two visitors shared a frown and then Palmer said, "On 10 October, a prisoner whom you know as Sebastian Ballentine escaped from a transport caravan that was taking him to face charges in Montreal."

Elliot could feel the blood draining from his face, and the rest of the Inspector's words barely registered in his mind.

"He was helped in his escape by a young woman with whom he had been corresponding since his first incarceration in Canada. We now believe he has returned to New York with the intention of seeking revenge against you and your partner, Detective Olivia Benson."

Elliot was livid. "October 10th? That's almost three weeks ago! Why the _hell_ am I just hearing about this now?"

"It was our mistake entirely, Detective," Palmer admitted stoically. "I'm sorry for that, and I make no excuses. Last time he ran from us, he went west. He has family in Alberta near a town called Whitecourt. We never thought he'd come back to New York until we discovered this."

From the floor beside her chair, she picked up a heavy, blood spattered scrapbook and handed it to him.

"It's already been processed," she said. "You can handle it."

Elliot opened the scrapbook and his eyes grew wide. The first page was an article from _The New York Times_ about Ballentine's arrest. Both he and Olivia had been quoted in the article. The next page was about one of his cases, and the one after that was about one of hers. Near the middle, the articles about him included quotes from Dani, and articles about Olivia were from computer crimes cases. He flipped to the back of the book and thought he was going to become ill when he saw their engagement announcement from the newspaper. On the next page was a copy of their name on the property tax rolls for Kings County along with their address in Brooklyn. It was public information. Just that easy, the bastard knew where they lived.

"Where did you find this?" he asked, surprised by how hoarse his voice had suddenly become.

Houser finally spoke up. "In a honeymoon hotel just this side of Niagara Falls, along with his accomplice's body."

"Cap, I need to call Olivia. She's home alone."

Cragen handed the phone across the desk to him. "You're speed dial one," he said.

Elliot hit the button and waited. The room was so tensely quiet that all of them could hear the call ringing through at the other end of the line. After a dozen rings, Elliot frowned and said, "She's not answering."

"Go, check on her. I'll call Dispatch to send a patrol by your house, but you need to be with her," Don said as Elliot stood and crossed the room.

Pausing at the door, Elliot said, "Have them do a drive by first. If everything looks ok, tell them to wait for me. I don't want them frightening her in her condition."

"Gotcha," Don agreed and picked up the phone.

Elliot was halfway across the squad room ignoring the concerned questions of his colleagues when Palmer called out, "Detective, let us come with you!"

"If that's what you want, you'll have to keep up," he yelled back to them without even slowing his pace.

Palmer and Houser exchanged a look and then jogged out of the office and down the hall to catch up with him.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
9:51 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

The cacophony inside her head was getting worse. Doors creaking, piano playing, wind howling . . .

_He's gonna get you!_

Every now and then, one sound would rise above the rest. Foot steps, the house breathing, lunatics laughing . . .

_Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!_

A cat screaming, the baby crying, that wretched lullaby . . .

_Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick!_

Bones crunching, ghosts moaning, clocks chiming . . .

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

She sat on the couch rocking and sobbing with her hands over her ears and tears streaming down her face, not sure whether she was going mad with terror or whether she was terrified of her own madness . . .

_He's gonna get you!_

Glass breaking . . .

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

It came from the family room! She swallowed back her sobs. Now she knew where the danger was. She snatched up the gun from where she had put it on the coffee table when she first covered her ears to try to block the sound and then bolted for the kitchen door.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

It was jammed. The knob wouldn't turn. She couldn't risk going out a window. The house set up several feet off the ground. She could injure herself falling and become easy prey.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

She heard the knob on the family room door start to turn, and when the intruder found it was locked, she heard the thump of a shoulder banging against it. The basement door was too far away. She had one chance. She ran for the stairs as fast as she could.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa! I'm coming for youuuuu!_

The voice was taunting, like its owner was toying with her. She was only on the third step when she heard the door give way. Something grabbed her ankle, and she kicked backwards hard. She felt the satisfying crunch of bone under her foot and heard a grunt and a thud as her attacker fell to the floor. She couldn't see her target because it was so dark in the house, so instead of wasting precious moments trying to shoot, she ran.

For a split second, she paused at the top of the stairs, considering where to run. They had fire escape ladders in each of the bedrooms, but they took too long to deploy. Then she heard a familiar and well-loved voice in her head.

_The water heater is just on the other side of this wall, and getting blasted with a hundred and fifty-five-degree water straight from the tank hurts._

The water heater was inside the closet of the spare room. There was an empty space on the other side of it where she wanted Elliot to install another small closet; he just hadn't gotten around to it yet. If she backed into it, she could squeeze past the water heater and hide in the void. If he found her, she was trapped, but she was armed, and he couldn't get to her without exposing himself.

She slipped into the spare room, wriggled into her hiding place, and prayed that help would come soon. She heard footsteps on the stairs and tried to quiet her breathing.


	10. Hide and Seek

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Ten  
Hide and Seek**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
10:03 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

The voice called her teasingly.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

Now it was on the landing.

_Come out, come out, wherever you are!_

Insane laughter.

_You know I'll find you._

In the master bedroom.

_There's nowhere to go, Olivia! _

The bathroom just on the other side of the wall. It was so loud she jumped.

_Make it easy on yourself. Come get this over with._

From the nursery.

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa!_

She heard the door to the spare room creak open and shoved a fist in her mouth to keep herself quiet.

* * *

Elliot pulled in behind the patrol car that was parked across the street from his house. By the time he got to the driver's side door, he had his badge out to show the officers.

"I'm Detective Stabler," he told them. "That's my house. My wife is in there alone. What did you find in the drive-by?"

The young officer whose name badge said McHenry shrugged and said, "Everything looks ok from the car, Sir."

"Well, it's not," Elliot said as he heard the thuds of Palmer and Houser closing the doors to their sedan. "We always, always, _always_ leave the exterior lights on, and when I'm working late, my wife leaves a light on in the front room, too."

"Trouble?" Houser asked as he and Palmer joined Elliot and the two patrol officers.

"Looks like it," Elliot replied.

"What do you want us to do?" Palmer asked.

Pointing across the car to McHenry's partner, he said, "You, go with Marshal Houser here." Turning to Houser, he said, "Circle around the back of the house. Meet Palmer and me at the back door."

Houser and the officer nodded and took off.

"McHenry, give me your radio." As the young man handed it over, Elliot continued, "If you see anyone approaching or leaving the house, get on the horn and let us know, then _stop_ them, got it?"

"Yes, Sir."

Elliot clipped the radio onto his belt, drew his gun and checked that the safety was off. Looking at Palmer, he asked, "You ready?"

She nodded. "Right behind you."

They ran across the street and up the driveway and were just creeping through the carport when Houser came on the radio telling them, "_We have a broken window on this side. Drive-by didn't see it because it was away from the street. You want me to go in?"_

It took half a second for Elliot to make his decision. "Yeah, but be careful. Remember, my wife is a cop, too, and she's nine months pregnant with twins. I don't want you upsetting her, and you don't want her mistaking you for an intruder."

"_Right."_

At the back door now, Elliot tried the knob and found it locked. He took his key out of his pocket, but couldn't get it in the lock.

"Need some light?" Palmer asked, and she shined a penlight on the lock for him.

"Thanks," he said, and taking a closer look he told her, "somebody's jammed something in the lock. I need to kick it in."

"Wait," Palmer said and got between him and the door. "First see if Houser can get it open from the inside. If Ballentine is in there, kicking the door in will only alert him to our presence if he doesn't already know we are here."

"_The interior door to this room has been broken open from inside the room,"_ Houser's voice came over the radio. Elliot had to listen carefully because there was an outrageous racket in the background. "_What's your call, Stabler?"_

"The back door is jammed," Elliot said. "I'm directly opposite of your position. Come see if you can let me in from your side."

"_On my way_."

* * *

Olivia huddled in the space behind the water heater and struggled to breathe quietly through her nose as she listened for footsteps in the room. She had managed to stop crying, but her face was still wet with tears.

She could hear laughter and music somewhere in the house, but this room was eerily quiet.

_I'll be back for you later._

It knew it had found her. She bit the back of her hand until she tasted blood in an effort to remain silent. She could do nothing but keep quiet and wait for her chance.

The door creaked shut and she heard the lock turn. She knew she was alone again.

* * *

"What the hell is that racket?" Elliot asked as he went into the kitchen.

"Hell if I know," Houser said, "but it's louder in some rooms that it is in others. What's your plan now, Stabler?"

They were meeting in the faint glow of Palmer's penlight, and Elliot looked across the glare to the young officer who had accompanied Houser. "What's your name, son?"

"Peter Olaf, Sir."

"Ok, Peter, the breaker box is at the head of the basement stairs on your right," he said. "The door to the basement is in the middle of the hall on your right. Why don't you see if you can get us some lights?"

"Yes, Sir," the young man said, and off he went.

"Palmer, Houser, you search the downstairs, it's just three rooms, the john, and the hall closet," he told them, "then check out the basement. It's all one big room. I'm going upstairs."

"Right."

"Gotcha."

Elliot crept across the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. He took a moment to carefully feel how the door frame had splintered when it had been broken open. He hadn't figured Sebastian Ballentine was that strong, but he supposed with two or three tries, he could have managed it.

Turning to the stairwell, he started to climb. He had the advantage of knowing where all the creaks and squeaks on the stairs were, but Ballentine had the high ground, plenty of places to take cover, and a clear view of his one and only way up, if he could see in the dark. As he moved to the top of the stairs, he leaned forward and finished climbing them on all fours to lower his profile and shorten the length of time that he was a good target.

When he made it to the landing, he immediately flattened himself against the wall. The sound of breathing came from the master bedroom to his right. Weird music chimed from the nursery down the hall, and noises he couldn't identify floated up from the ground floor. There was nothing but silence from the spare bedroom, and he thought the door was closed.

If he were trying to get away, he would close and lock the door behind him. If he were trying to keep a pregnant woman hostage, he would lock her in. He wasn't going to bother trying the knob first and risk warning Ballentine that he had found him. As he stepped across the landing to kick the door in, something hurtled out of the darkness and shoved him down the stairs.

He yelled in surprise and tumbled down the steps sideways, striking his shoulder, his elbow, his head, and his knee. Then he lay very still at the bottom.

* * *

Olivia crouched in the darkness listening to the chaos around her. She could hear the music, the breathing, the laughter, and the footsteps, all of it creating a maelstrom of noise around her, but in her little hole was a space of quiet. She strained her ears, desperate to hear the intruder, desperate for some kind of warning of its approach.

She heard a yell rise above the general clamor and then a series of irregular thumps and bumps. Then she was again surrounded by the distant din of moaning and crying, discordant music and feral animals.

* * *

Elliot moaned softly as he came to. He sat up slowly, surprised that he could be dizzy in the dark. He had always thought dizziness was a result of visual input conflicting with the balance mechanism of the inner ear, and it was so dark he wasn't getting much visual input. He must have banged his head awfully hard.

"Detective, are you all right?"

He tensed for a moment then relaxed as he immediately recognized Inspector Palmer's voice. "I'll live," he replied. "What's happened? How long have I been out?"

"Only a few seconds, and as far as I can tell, nothing since you fell down the steps."

"I didn't fall, I was pushed."

She placed a hand under his elbow to help him to his feet, and he sucked air through his teeth at the sudden, grinding pain.

"What's wrong?"

"I think it's broken," he said. "He's upstairs, probably in the guest room by now. Let's go."

"You're hurt," Palmer said. "Stay put. I'll go."

"Please, Inspector," he pleaded. "He's after my wife."

Miali hesitated only a moment before consenting. Like the man said, it was his wife who was in danger. It was also his house and he knew the way around it far better than she did. Besides, if the guy could fall down a flight of stairs, get knocked out, come to, and still feel like arguing with her, he was probably tough enough to look after himself in a bad situation.

"Ok, but stay behind me."

"But . . ."

"You're injured, I'm not. Stay behind me."

"Ok. The guestroom's at the top of the stairs on the left. The door was closed when I was up there."

* * *

_Oliiiiiviaaaaaaa! We have company! He's lying in a pile of broken bones at the bottom of the stairs._

The voice was taunting, teasing, hoping to get a rise out of her. It took all her strength to remain quiet, but she did it because she knew that her only advantage was that he didn't know where she was yet. If she could stay quiet until he looked in the closet, he wouldn't know he had found her until she had blown his head off.

_I think it was your husband, that obnoxious, arrogant Detective Stabler._

She suppressed a scream. It caught painfully in her throat. Her poor, sweet, beautiful Elliot. Why hadn't she warned him?

She heard the latch on the closet door click.

* * *

Palmer and Elliot reached the top of the stairs together. When they turned to the left, they saw a figure silhouetted in the light from the neighbor's back porch. It hadn't illuminated the down stairs because there was a board fence and a dense row of shrubs between the two properties.

Palmer hesitated and Elliot pushed her aside. He knew the figure before them wasn't Olivia.

"Police! Put your hands over your head!"

The figure turned, but didn't raise its hands. He heard a sharp crack and Inspector Palmer grunted in pain. There was another gunshot, and then he fired his own weapon. The figure fell against the closet door and slumped to the floor.

"Olivia!" Elliot yelled, and at just that moment, the lights came on.

* * *

From her hiding place, Olivia heard shouting and gunfire and someone screaming her name. Then there was a terrible thump against the door.

For a moment after that all she heard was the din of music, clocks, laughter, crying, and rabid animals snarling and fighting. Next came the murmuring of quiet voices. She couldn't make out any words, but they were just on the other side of the door. It had friends. She was outnumbered. She shivered with a chill of despair.

There was a bit of quiet scuffling, and suddenly she could see a line of light spilling in under the closet door. Whatever was going to happen to her, it was about to happen now. She wasn't going down without a fight. She used her fingers to make sure the safety was off and then with both hands, steadied her gun in the space between the water heater and the wall.

The door opened, the light blinded her, she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

* * *

As soon as Ballentine's body was moved away, Elliot directed Palmer, Houser, and Olaf to stand on the other side of the room where they wouldn't upset Olivia any more. Then he opened the closet door. Seeing nothing, in the space where clothes were meant to hang, he looked to his left at the crevice behind the water heater. His eyes widened as he realized he was looking down the barrel of a gun, and he dropped to the floor a blink before the doorframe exploded into splinters above him.

He rolled out of the line of fire, barely avoiding a yell of pain over jostling his busted elbow, and stood up against the wall outside the closet.

"Olivia?" he called in a measured even voice. When she didn't respond, he just kept talking. "Olivia, it's Elliot. I'm home, Sweetheart, and you're safe now."

She still hadn't replied. He looked at his three companions, and when they all shrugged, he just started speaking again.

"Liv, Honey, I'm gonna come into the closet now. I want to help you. Please don't shoot."

He holstered his weapon and very slowly peeked around the corner. Emboldened by the fact that she didn't fire, he stepped fully into the closet.

"Liv, give me the gun, Baby."

She stood there shaking and sobbing, but didn't move to hand over the weapon. He took a deep breath to steady himself and said, "Ok, Sweetie, I'm gonna take the gun. All you have to do is let it go."

Very carefully, he placed his right hand over the top of the gun and turned it toward the closet wall. Then he tried to pull it free, but her grip was still too strong.

"Come on, Sweetheart," he said pulling steadily on the gun. "Just let . . . it . . . go!"

Finally she released it and collapsed to the floor sobbing. He handed the gun off behind him to whichever of his colleagues stepped up to collect it as he crouched down to maintain contact with his wife.


	11. Rescue

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Eleven  
Rescue**_

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
10:32 P.M., Friday, October 28, 2011_

Elliot sat Indian-style on the floor of the closet for several minutes shushing Olivia and whispering encouraging words to her until she was able to calm down enough to have a fluent, if tearful, conversation. As badly as he wanted to hold her, he just couldn't, and he was only able to maintain physical contact by stretching his good arm behind the water heater to soothingly rub her thigh. She didn't appear to be in any physical discomfort, and now that he was there, she seemed to feel safe in her hiding place. He didn't want to upset her further, so he chose to let her stay there until Ballentine's body was removed.

He sat there and kept up a constant stream of comforting babble in the midst of the crime scene chaos. As Houser, Palmer, McHenry and Olaf gave their statements, someone found a way to shut off the creepy sounds that had drifted from various rooms in the house. While he told Liv how much he loved her and that everything was ok, the CSU people photographed and documented everything and someone from the ME's office pronounced Ballentine officially dead. When the body was finally removed, he decided it was time to coax her out.

"Olivia? Sweetheart, I can't get in there to help you out, you know, it's too small a space, but if you can just get past the water heater, we can put you to bed," he told her. "Do you think you can come out now?"

She sniffled and whimpered, "Yes."

"Ok, let me stand up first, and then I think I can help you, ok?"

Another very timid response, "Ok."

His busted arm made getting to his feet a bit awkward because he could only push up with one hand, so when Marshal Houser stepped forward and gently helped him stand, he nodded his appreciation. Then the world started to spin because of the blow to the head he had taken when he tumbled down the stairs. Houser steadied him, and this time he said, "Thank you."

"Ok, Baby," he said soothingly, "give me your hand."

He reached out to her and she grabbed hold and pulled herself up.

"I . . . I have to back out," she said. "If I try going forward, my belly gets in the way."

Despite everything, he had to smile at that. "Ok, Sweetheart, you do what you have to. I'm right here."

He was a little nervous about trying to help her because he wasn't all that steady on his feet himself, but Houser, Palmer, Olaf, and McHenry were all there watching nervously, so if he got into trouble, he knew at least one of them would jump in to help.

Olivia turned around and backed towards him stumbling a bit as she squeezed past the water heater, but he was there to catch her against his chest and hold her upright with his good arm. Once she was steady on her feet, he slipped an arm around her waist and gently guided her to the master bedroom. He settled her on the bed and was about to pack a bag so they could go spend the night with Maureen and Jim when he noticed the wet spot on her pants.

"Olivia?" he asked gently, "I don't want to embarrass you, but did you . . . uhm . . .did you pee your pants because you were so frightened?"

He knew it was more likely something else, but he wanted to eliminate the less serious possibilities first. Also, it might be less frightening if she had a moment or two to realize for herself what was really happening.

"Huh? No . . . Oh my God, Elliot. My water broke! I didn't even notice it. I should be in labor! Why am I not in labor? There's something wrong. You've got to get me to a hospital so they can take care of the girls!"

_So much for being less frightening,_ he thought. She was almost hysterical again, and given what she had been through, he couldn't blame her. He pulled her into a one-armed hug and tried to calm her.

"Shhhh. It's all right, Sweetheart," he murmured as he rubbed her back. "You might not go into labor for another twenty-four hours. This happens to lots of women, it's perfectly normal."

She sniffled and whimpered, "Really?"

"Really."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I've been through this three times before, remember?"

She smiled up at him tearfully and said, "Yeah."

For a moment they just quietly smiled at each other as he wiped her tears away. Then she asked, "So, what do we do now?"

"Well, since we know you'll be going into labor soon, I think we should call an ambulance to take you to the hospital."

She nodded. "Ok."

"Do you want me to call Ginny Marchesi?"

She shook her head. "No, I just want you."

He smiled. "Well, you got me." Looking toward the door, he called quietly, "Marshal Houser?"

Houser stepped up to the threshold but didn't intrude into the room, and Elliot decided right then that he liked the guy.

"Could you call an ambulance?" he asked. "Olivia isn't in labor yet, but her water has broken and she needs to get to the hospital."

"Well, we called one for you," Houser said. "It arrived a while ago, but you seemed to be doing ok, and your wife needed you, so the paramedics have been waiting downstairs. I'll send them up."

Elliot nodded and the Marshal stepped out of the doorway.

"They called an ambulance for you?" Olivia gasped. "Elliot, what happened?"

"I just took a tumble down the stairs," he said. "I banged my head, and I think I busted my arm. I'll be fine."

"Elliot!"

"Olivia, relax. We're both just gonna sit here until the paramedics come check us out, ok?"

"But, El, you could have a concussion!"

He nodded, and had to swallow hard when his stomach revolted. "Yeah, I probably do," he agreed, "but as long as I'm conscious and coherent we know it's a mild one, so let's just relax."

She felt like he should be more concerned, but there wasn't much that could be done for either of them until medical help arrived, so finally, she just nodded. "Ok."

They sat quietly for several moments comforting each other with him rubbing circles on her back and her sliding her hand up and down his thigh. Then Olivia said quietly, "I heard gunshots. What happened?"

He gave her a kiss on the temple and said, "Sebastian Ballentine escaped and he came looking for revenge. He's dead now. They removed the body before you came out of the closet."

"Oh." She was quiet for a moment, and then asked, "So, the voices weren't in my head after all?"

"No, they weren't," Elliot told her. "I don't know what he did or how he did it, but he made all the voices, music, and noise. I'm sure TARU will be able to explain it to us later."

She nodded.

After another minute of silence, Elliot asked, "Olivia, why didn't you tell me what was happening? Why didn't you ask me to stay home this morning?"

"I didn't realize anything was going on until after you left, and then I thought it was all in my head."

He nodded, but asked, "So, why didn't you ask one of the kids to stay or call me to come home later? I mean, obviously you were really frightened."

"Like I said, I thought it was all in my head," she explained. "I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. People have been going out of their way to take care of me for months. I just kept telling myself there was nothing to be afraid of. It didn't work, for obvious reasons, but I figured if I could just hang on until you got home you would take care of me."

"I see," he nodded. "Just trying to be a tough girl, huh?"

She smiled slightly. "I guess so."

He pressed his face close to hers, mashing his nose against her cheek and whispered, "Don't do it again, ok?" Then he kissed her.

"I won't. I promise."

They were interrupted then by the arrival of the paramedics. After checking them both out, the EMTs helped Olivia onto the gurney. As she lay back she gasped in pain.

"Liv?" Elliot said in concern.

She gave him a somewhat frightened smile and said, "I think that was a contraction."


	12. For Martantos

Martantos,

Here's your update.

I don't respond well to rude demands and name-calling. Maybe you and your friends use that word as an affectionate insult. Since I don't know you, you are not my friend. My friends know better than to treat me that way.

I think it's sad that our society has degenerated to such a point that people can verbally abuse others and think nothing of it, or even worse, have some warped idea that by treating them badly, they are somehow complimenting them and including them in their circle of friends.

I suppose I should be glad you are so eager to read another chapter, but I'd just as soon not have received your review. It's the first one I've ever gotten that I really didn't want.

So, there's your update. I'll post another chapter just as soon as it is done.

Jo

P.S. To everybody else, I'm sorry for getting your hopes up. I've never done this before, but the review was anonymous and I felt like I had to respond.


	13. What Dreams Are Made Of

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter TwelveWhat Dreams Are Made Of**_

_New York_ _Methodist Hospital  
1910 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn  
10:03 A.M., Saturday, October 29, 2011_

As he drifted back to consciousness, Elliot slowly became aware of his surroundings, the inarticulate squawking of the PA system, a squeaky wheel on a medication cart, nurses laughing in the hall. The distant, hopeful, demanding squall of a new life made him smile. Then he felt another presence in the room, not his wife.

His eyes snapped open and he breathed a sigh of relief to see John Munch sitting in the other chair quietly reading a file on the screen of his wireless laptop. The department had bought one for each senior detective in the squad a year or so ago to help reduce the amount of paperwork that had to be shuffled from office to office to complete a case. In theory, all they had to do was e-mail their reports to the DA's office and Casey could print them off at will, but the reality was that there were so many unresolved conflicts between the DA's antiquated software and the newer SVU software that Casey ran a real risk of having cases dismissed if she trusted the computers to actually print everything out like they were supposed to do. Still the ultra-lightweight, interlinked computers were a convenient way for each detective to carry around the entire squad's caseload which, ironically, had them all doing more paperwork and research at home and less on the city's dime.

"Hey," Elliot said softly.

Munch looked up and smiled. "Hey." He closed the laptop and tucked it down beside him in the seat.

Elliot looked toward Olivia, who was sleeping in the bed. "How is she?"

"Fine, I guess," Munch said. "You've both been sleeping soundly for the hour I've been here. How's the arm?"

Elliot frowned at him. "Hurts like a son of a bitch, now that you mention it," he grimaced in obvious pain.

Elliot's broken arm was going to require surgery to set the bone so it could heal properly, but he had refused to leave Olivia's side until he was sure she ok. So, while her contractions were still twenty minutes apart, one of the ER docs had come up to the maternity ward to splint his arm, put it in a sling, and give him some pain pills. Though everything had gone smoothly, labor and delivery had been traumatic for Olivia, and then she had really needed her sleep. Elliot didn't expect to be going into surgery until the next day, or even later.

"Oh, sorry."

"Forget about it. I'd have noticed it hurting eventually." Elliot dug his good hand into his pants pocket and said, "The doc gave me something for it."

He pulled out the bottle of pills and struggled to hold it in his left hand while he tried to twist the cap off with his right.

"Need some help?" Munch offered with a wry smile.

Elliot held the container out to his friend, relieved to surrender the battle with the bottle cap, and John came over to get it from him.

"How many are you supposed to take?" Munch asked as he wrestled with the childproof lid and nearly dumped the whole bottle of pills on the floor when it finally came open.

"I dunno," Elliot replied, "what's it say on the label?"

"One or two tablets every six hours, with a full glass of water or milk."

"I'll start with one," Elliot said, and John shook it out into his hand. Then Munch went over to the sink and got one of the little Dixie cups out of the dispenser and filled it with water. Elliot popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down, and John filled the cup for him three more times.

"Jeeze, Munch," Elliot finally complained. "Are you trying to make me float away?"

"It says a full glass of water for a reason," John said as his voice took on that whiny tone, and he filled the cup yet again. "Those pills can make you constipated. When I broke my leg years ago . . ."

"Don't tell me more than I want to know, John," Elliot interrupted.

"Then drink your water," Munch commanded.

The two men grinned at each other, and Elliot complied with the order. When he was finished with his drink, he crushed the cup and tossed it away in a conveniently placed trash can so that John couldn't fill it again, and asked, "Have you found out how Ballantine managed to . . . uh . . . haunt my house?"

"Yes and no. We've found the technology he used to do it, but we don't know how he got it into the house," the other detective replied. He went back to the chair he had been sitting in and picked up a bag from the floor next to it. Removing its contents, he handed some small electronic devices over to Elliot. "Pinhole cameras and miniature speakers. They were wired into your alarm system along with a transceiver in each room so that they would continue to function once he cut the power to the rest of the house. Most of the hardware was hidden inside the window and door frames just like the wiring for the alarm system, and the cameral lens and speakers blended right in with the usual sensors. Do you have any idea how he might have managed that?"

Elliot looked seriously steamed. "Yes, I do. Some woman called about a month ago claiming to be from the security company. She wanted to make an appointment to come do a site inspection, said they were upgrading their software and had to replace some of the hardware in the house because it wasn't compatible. The guy was there twice, once to check things out, and again to do the installation."

He pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. "How could I have been so stupid? All I had to do was call them back and I would have known it was a scam."

"Not necessarily," John said. "Your alarm system operates over the phone lines with a backup program that is dependent on cell towers. They put an electronic trap on your land line so they could intercept any calls they didn't want you making. You'd only have gotten the real security company if you had used your cell or called from some place other than your house. Besides, there was no reason to call and confirm the story. Who questions a free upgrade on equipment they already own from a company they trust?"

Elliot nodded, reluctantly conceding the point, and asked, "How come Olivia was the only one to hear the noises until I got there last night?"

"Remember the transceivers I mentioned?" John asked, opening his laptop and prodding it back to life.

When Elliot nodded, he continued, "They were communicating with his computer. He was holed up in a vacant house two blocks away."

Munch punched up a play list on his screen and brought it over to show Elliot. "Most of this is just twenty- or thirty-second soundbytes pirated from CD samples available at Amazon. He used an editing program to mix the tracks and then waited until Olivia was in a room alone to play something for her."

Munch clicked on a file called "Sleep, Little Baby," and a demented lullaby started playing. It's creepy minor-key notes and a whistling, howling, windy noise in the background made the hair on Elliot's neck stand on end. Olivia started whimpering and writhing in the bed. Munch immediately closed the program, and Elliot was instantly at her side, soothing and shushing her.

"Sorry about that," John apologized.

Elliot nodded, knowing his friend would never have deliberately done something to upset Liv.

"Well, you can see how, after a few hours of that, it was easy for her imagination to take over."

Elliot nodded again, not even looking at the other detective. His wife was waking up.

Olivia's eyes fluttered open, then squeezed shut and cautiously opened again. She looked into Elliot's beautiful, concerned blue eyes, smiled, and said, "Hi."

He grinned, obviously more relaxed now that she had spoken, and said, "Hello, Gorgeous."

She frowned and rolled her eyes left and right as if she was looking for someone. "Who's that? Your girlfriend?"

Elliot laughed and kissed her on the forehead. "I was talking about you, but Munch is here."

"He's gorgeous?" Olivia asked mischievously.

Elliot opened his mouth to reply and then stopped himself. "There's no good answer to that question. I'll either be teased or get myself in trouble."

Olivia giggled, Munch gave an annoyed little, "Hmph," and Elliot just moved aside so she could see and speak to her visitor.

"Hello, Gorgeous," Olivia teased when Munch moved to stand beside the bed.

Elliot sighed and rolled his eyes.

"How are you feeling, Liv?"

She groaned. "Like a garbage truck ran over me, then backed up and did it again just for spite," she said. "Have you seen the girls?"

"I did. I stopped by the nursery on my way here," John said. "They're gorgeous. Thank God they take after their mother."

Olivia chuckled and Elliot rolled his eyes again. Just then, two nurses came in rolling bassinets.

"Well, it looks like feeding time," Munch said. "I think I'll let the two of you have this moment with the two of them."

He leaned over and gave Liv a kiss on the cheek. "You did good, Liv," he told her. Then he shook Elliot's hand, offered a word of congratulations, collected his things, and left. Liv and El barely noticed. They were both already captivated by their girls.

Both babies were healthy and beautiful, if a little on the small side. Alex had come into the world at 6:07:23 A.M. and her sister Casey arrived less than two minutes behind her at 6:09:14. Elliot had claimed the honor of cutting both umbilical cords, and then the cord blood was banked because with Olivia's murky gene pool, they didn't know what potential catastrophes they might need to hedge against.

The girls first few minutes of life were a bit worrisome for their parents as Olivia heard one of the nurses reporting the one-minute Apgar scores for another to write them down. One baby's was only a three and the other scored just a five. Both parents knew that a good score was at least a seven and the waited tensely as their daughters were massaged, pinched, and had their nostrils suctioned to try to stimulate them. Although he couldn't hide his concern very well, Elliot tried to reassure Olivia by telling her that they were just tired. After all, they'd been through the same harrowing day and over seven hours of labor that she had endured.

Finally, after a minute or two that seemed like ages, they heard a hearty cry. From where she lay, Olivia could see a tiny fist swinging wildly in the air, and she said, "That's Casey."

"Sounds just like her," Elliot quipped.

But neither of them could smile yet. As little Casey was wrapped in a soft blanket, given a tiny knit cap and brought to snuggle with her mother, the medical team continued to work on Alexandra.

"Come on, Sweetie, cry for me!" one of the nurses demanded, turning her over and patting her on the back.

Then there was a piercing, high-pitched squeal which descended quickly into a decidedly grumpy murmur and the whole room breathed a sigh of relief. Moments later little Alex joined her sister lying against her mommy's skin. Elliot and Olivia beamed at each other and he gave her a huge kiss on the lips before reaching out to caress each of his baby girls.

The twins nursed for a good fifteen minutes and then just cuddled quietly. Casey dozed with a tiny fist shoved in her mouth. Alexandra lay gazing serenely up at her mom yawning occasionally until her eyes finally closed. Olivia only reluctantly gave them up receive the medications and vitamins that were standard for newborns, and weighing them quickly became another source of anxiety for her. At just five pounds, seven ounces, Casey was officially classified as a low birth weight baby. At five pounds nine ounces, Alexandra was small, but not considered low birth weight. Statistically, those two ounces made a huge difference in the health and developmental issues the girls were expected to face. Weight was just one factor that contributed to a baby's well-being, but no matter how hard they tried, neither the doctor nor Elliot could convince Olivia that it was normal for twins to be a little on the small side both tiny girls were just fine. Then Casey had started crying again.

Elliot cringed at the sound, but grinned and said, "See? The kid's got a great set of pipes. She'll be fine."

Finally, Olivia was able to smile and relax a little.

Now, they were crowded together on the hospital bed. Olivia was sitting up on the right side, legs stretched out on the mattress in front of her as she nursed Alex and Elliot was half slouched against the pillows on the left, cuddling Casey with his injured arm out of the way against the safety rail. The baby lay against his chest with her head on his shoulder. His right hand looked enormous where it rubbed gentle circles on her tiny back, and he had his lips pressed softly against her soft, dark hair. Olivia smiled as she looked at them together. He may have fallen in love with her, but he had absolutely drowned in it with his children.

Elliot looked up. "What?"

Liv shook her head and grinned. "Nothing." By now, Alex had quit nursing and was just playing with the nipple. Gently pulling her away, Liv said, "It's time for Daddy to burp you so your sister can get a turn."

Elliot placed his good hand on the back of Casey's head to support it and then levered his body so he was sitting up on the bed. Next, very carefully and with Olivia using one hand to steady her against his forearm, he lowered the baby into his lap and slipped his arm out from under her. Finally, he slumped back into the pillows and Olivia placed Alex against his chest where Casey had been. Adjusting her top to expose the other breast, she finally picked Casey up from Elliot's lap and began to nurse again. It was the perfect system, considering Elliot's broken arm, and once they got home and could use the extra room on their king-sized bed, it would work even better.

Both of them had been surprised to discover that the girls were fraternal twins. For some reason, because they were both female, they had expected them to be identical, but such was not the case. Casey definitely favored Elliot more. She had his black hair, blue eyes, and the same fair Irish complexion that would burn badly if she got too much sun. Her chubby little cheeks would turn bright red when she got upset and her eyes already lightened and darkened to match her mood. Alexandra had Olivia's complexion, the same full lips, brown hair, and brown eyes with her right eyebrow arching noticeably higher than her left. The girls were as different as night and day in looks and temperament, and they were healthy, and beautiful, and perfect; and Olivia and Elliot could not have been happier.

They had indeed done 'good.'

* * *

**Alex Johnson: **I really have better things to do than respond to flames, so feel lucky, you're the last one I will acknowledge. With over 6000 hits at the time of this posting, I think a lot of people are taking the time to read this story. Dawn DeNoon is the "dumbass" who "invented" Sebastian Ballentine (played by gifted comedic actor Martin Short) in "Pure" (season six, episode eighteen). Try watching the series sometime; maybe then you'll understand what you read. Now, go back to playing with yourself. With a potty mouth like yours, I doubt you have many friends to play with you. 


	14. Golden Slumbers

_**Psychic Revenge**_

_**Chapter Thirteen  
Golden Slumbers**_

_New York_ _Methodist Hospital  
1910 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn  
9:17 A.M., Monday, October 31, 2011_

"This is fine, thank you."

Elliot recognized Olivia's voice and he wanted to go to her, but he couldn't find her in the dark. Then another voice spoke, one he didn't recognize, and it was so quiet that he couldn't make out what it was saying.

"That will be great, thanks," Olivia replied.

He felt her hand, smooth and soft against his cheek, and her voice called sweetly, "El? Honey? Are you in there?"

Suddenly the darkness was gone. It took a moment or two for him to realize that he had opened his eyes. Then he grinned at her. "Hello, Gorgeous."

Olivia smiled down at him. "Hello yourself, Handsome. How do you feel?"

Everything went dark again and he realized he must have closed his eyes to think. "Stoned," he said, and a moment later he opened his eyes and gave her a dopey grin.

She chuckled at him and said, "I believe that. Do you know why you're here?"

More darkness, then he opened his eyes saying, "They fixed my arm, right?"

Liv nodded. "Yes, they did, and everything went fine. You'll be out of the cast in six to eight weeks."

He nodded his understanding and suddenly became very queasy. Olivia must have noticed the sudden change in his complexion, because she quickly grabbed an emesis basin off the nearby nightstand and held it for him while he retched. When he was done, she wiped his face with a tissue and gave him some ice chips to suck on.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so," he said, and frowning, he asked, "Should you be out of bed?"

She chuckled and said, "Right now, I'm in better shape than you."

"I know, but . . ." he trailed off. There really was no _but_. He was just being over-protective. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours was a pretty standard hospital stay for a healthy woman who'd had an uncomplicated delivery. "How are the girls?"

"Perfect," Liv beamed. "I've asked the nurses to bring them here for their next feeding."

"Great," he said. "I can't wait to see them." The world went dark once again.

She laughed at him. "If you're awake." Slipping her hand into his good one and interlacing their fingers, she said, "Tell you what, you sleep now, and when the girls get here, I'll wake you, ok?"

"Mmmm."

* * *

"Elliot? Ellllllioooot." Behind the soft voice calling his name he heard a hearty squall. Somebody was hungry. 

"Hmmm?" Slowly he opened his eyes.

"Somebody wants to see her daddy."

Olivia was holding little Alexandra up so she could look at him. The baby studied him with those big, placid, brown eyes, and he felt himself turn to goo. Then he heard Casey squall again and was glad she wanted him to hold Alexandra. Pushing the button to elevate the head of his bed, he said softly, "Hey, Angel, you wanna come to Daddy?"

When he was sitting up, Olivia helped him nestle the little girl against his chest. Holding the baby was a bit awkward with one arm, but he used his cast to support most of her weight and held her close to him with his good arm.

"Does she need to be burped?" he asked as Olivia got her sister out of the bassinet.

"Not yet. She hasn't eaten," Liv said. "I need to feed Casey first."

"Good plan," he told her, and she made a face at him. Then the room went quiet for a few minutes as Olivia nursed Casey and Elliot adored Alexandra.

"You know, if you can keep your lunch down, the doctors say they'll send us both home today," Liv told him.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "No kidding."

She nodded, then she grimaced in pain, looked down at baby Casey, and said, "Hey, kid, if you suck that thing off, you're gonna have to go hungry." Looking up at Elliot she laughed and said, "She's like having a Hoover attached to my chest. God!"

Elliot grinned at her and said, "That's one aspect of child rearing I'm glad I can't share with you. So, are you ready to go home?" He asked the question casually because he didn't want make it a big deal if it wasn't, but he knew she had been traumatized by Ballantine's manipulations and wanted to give her a chance to tell him if she needed some help dealing with it.

"Well, Maureen tells me she called a cleaning service that specializes in crime scene cleanup to take care of the blood upstairs," she began. "Rick and Jim took care of fixing the busted window, the family room door, and a bullet hole in the wall outside the master bedroom, and Cragen got one of the guys from TARU to inspect the alarm system after the company sent someone out to fix it. So, the house is ready for us."

What his wife didn't say was more revealing that what she had said, Elliot realized. He gave her a steady look and spoke kindly, "You didn't answer my question. Are _you_ ready to go home?"

"Ok, Casey, you're just playing now," Olivia said to the baby. "I think it's time for Daddy to burp you, and for your sister to get a turn at nursing."

They swapped off babies, and once she had Alexandra positioned so she could suckle, she said, "It depends on how soon you plan to go back to work. It's better now that you told me how he did everything, but I won't deny that I still feel a little uneasy. I keep thinking, what if the girls had already been born. How would I have kept them safe?"

"You'll find you make a lot of decisions differently, now, Olivia," Elliot told her as he sat there patting little Casey on the back. "You wouldn't even have been there when he showed up."

Casey belched, a surprisingly loud sound to emanate from such a tiny person, and Elliot laughed. "That's a good one," he told her, then looked back at Olivia. "Why don't I start with a two-week medical leave, and then we'll see what we need to do from there, ok?"

Olivia nodded, and, the decision made, she asked him, "You haven't seen the finished nursery yet, have you?"

* * *

Elliot and Olivia held hands and beamed at each other as they rode downstairs in the elevator. She was in a wheelchair as per hospital policy for all new moms, but he was not considered a fall risk and was allowed to walk out of the hospital under his own steam. Casey and Alex were in the back of the elevator carrying the twins and quietly bickering about which of them favored her namesake most. Captain Cragen, who had stopped by to give Elliot the good news that IAB had cleared him in the shooting of Sebastian Ballentine and only needed his and Olivia's statements to officially close the file, was pushing the wheelchair; and Maureen was carrying the bag with her dad and Olivia's clothes. Maureen's husband, Jim was in the van with Nathalie waiting at the exit to drive Elliot, Olivia, and the babies home. 

The doors opened and the lobby seemed quite busy, and although none of them said anything, they all wondered what was happening. The moment they stepped out of the elevator, they found out. A group of reporters mobbed them with lights glaring, flashbulbs popping, cameras rolling, and microphones being thrust at them from all angles. It was clear they all wanted to talk to Elliot, but they were so loud talking over each other and shouting questions that he couldn't figure out why.

Olivia's nerves were already stretched too tight after Ballantine's psychological warfare, and the sudden assault of cacophony snapped them. She was desperate to locate her babies, but the crowd was pressing so close that she couldn't stand up. She sat turning in her chair trying to look behind her and calling out, "Alex? Casey! Where are my girls?"

Elliot's instinct was to stick close to Liv. He trusted their friends to look after the girls, but he knew that between the trauma of Ballantine's stunts and the hormones and anxiety of being a new mom, his wife would be feeling a little fragile. He squeezed her hand tighter, smiled down at her, and tried to move closer.

Cragen just wanted to forestall the mob before they were surrounded, but Maureen was too shocked to move out of his way. He some idea of why they were so excited to interview his detective, but he had no idea how they had located him here. Casey and Alex hung back with the twins waiting for Elliot or Olivia to tell them what to do.

For a moment, everything was chaos with the reporters pressing in on them and shouting questions over one another so that no one could be heard. Then one jerk with a microphone made the mistake of forcing his way between Olivia and Elliot and it all went to hell.

Before he knew what he was doing, Elliot cold-cocked the guy in front of half a dozen television cameras and even more newspaper photographers. The reporter stumbled back against Olivia's wheelchair causing her to scream and elbow him hard in the back. The force of her blow pushed him back into Elliot who neatly sidestepped and used the collar of the guy's coat to send him crashing headlong into a cart full of meal trays being pushed back to the cafeteria for washing.

When Elliot shifted position it gave Cragen room to move. He snatched the bag from Maureen's hands and placed it on Olivia's lap, grabbed Maureen by the wrists and placed her hands on the grips of Olivia's wheel chair, gently pushed Casey and Alex toward the door, and directed Maureen to follow saying, "Tell Casey to come back in once the twins are settled."

Once the women were safely on their way, he grabbed Elliot by the front of his jacket, and looked around for some cover. Then he shoved his detective into a nearby lounge and slammed the door behind them before Elliot could wreak more havoc.

"Look, Cap . . ."

"Shut up!" Cragen ordered sharply. Once he had Elliot's full attention, he softened his tone. "It's ok. I understand. I'm not mad, and if there's any trouble from what just happened out there, I'll back you all the way. You hear? I'll even be your witness if you want to charge him with assault. After all, he did touch you first. Ok?"

When Elliot nodded, he continued. "Ok, we have to try to fix this now, or we're gonna get a world of grief over it."

"So, what do we do?"

"You have to apologize to the guy you and Olivia just beat up, give them a statement, and answer a couple of questions," Don said. "Then turn it over to Casey and you can go home."

"Wait, where's Casey?" Elliot asked with a note of anxiety in his voice. "She and Alex had the girls."

"Calm down," Don reassured him. "I sent them out to the van. Casey will be back when the girls are settled. Now take a deep breath."

Elliot obeyed.

"Ok, are you ready to go out and meet the press?"

He nodded. "Yeah, but I have one question."

"What's that?"

"Why do they want to talk to me?"

"I can't stop _crying_ dammit!" Olivia sobbed into her tissue. "Why the _hell_ can't I stop crying?"

Maureen sat on the third seat of the van with her arms around her step-mom hugging her, comforting her, and rubbing her back. "It's ok, Liv," she assured her. "It's normal to be a wreck right about now. What happened in there would upset anyone."

"_But I never cry like this!_" Olivia wailed, which upset the babies and now there were three crying women in the van.

"And in a couple of weeks, you never will again," Maureen soothed as she tried not to smile. Olivia's hysterical tantrum was almost comical because it was so out of character for the tough cop she knew, but Casey and Alexandra's frantic grimaces to distract the twins were hilarious. "It's just hormones and stress, Liv. It will all be out of your system soon and you'll feel like yourself again."

"Unless I have post partum depression!"

"Give it a couple of weeks, Liv, and if you don't feel better, I'll take you to the doctor myself," she promised.

"I just want Elliot," she sobbed. "Please, I just want my husband so we can go home!"

Maureen shushed her and rocked her and looked at Casey and said, "You need to go get my dad now."

Casey just nodded, and leaving the babies in Alex's capable hands, she went back into the hospital.

When they left the lounge, Don was able to hold the press at bay with a fearsome glare while Elliot located the reporter he had assaulted. He found the man in a corner nursing a black eye and a knot on his head with icepacks apparently provided by the hospital.

"You got a minute?"

The guy cowered away. "You gonna hit me again?"

"No," Elliot tried not to smirk, "but I'd like to offer you a public apology." He felt a little bit bad about hurting the reporter but he disliked the press enough that he wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

The young man eyed him warily, and judging him to be sincere in his intent, he nodded his agreement.

"Ok, what's your name?"

"Brian, Brian Willis."

Elliot offered his hand, and Brian jumped, but then he understood the gesture and let the cop help him to his feet. As they walked toward where Cragen was standing, Elliot nodded slightly. Smiling, Don turned to the gaggle of reporters and said, "Now I believe Detective Stabler is ready to make a brief statement and then he will take a few questions."

As Elliot led Brian to the front of the group, the reporters erupted into a chorus of shouted questions again. He just waited calmly for them to stop talking. Only when they were quiet did he begin.

"Before I comment on the apprehension of Neil Czarhyskinsky, I would like to explain and apologize for my behavior of a few moments ago," he began. "Friday evening, in an event completely unrelated to the Czarhyskinsky case, my wife, who was pregnant with twins, was attacked in our own home. I can't tell you much about it because the case is still officially open, but it was a very traumatic event which resulted in my wife going into labor a week before her due date, an Inspector from the Canadian fugitive recovery unit getting shot in our home, and tragically, the death of another human being."

Don leaned over and whispered in his ear, and Elliot amended, "And me breaking my arm, which was just set in surgery this morning. So, you can see that my family and I have had a rough weekend."

He paused for a moment as the reporters mumbled amongst themselves. When he had their attention again, he continued. "Quite frankly, so much has happened in my life since the arrest of Neil Czarhyskinsky that I had completely forgotten about him. When all of you came charging at us, shouting, and flashing lights in our eyes, it was a little overwhelming, especially since we had no idea what you wanted. As a new mom, my wife is already a little on edge. As a husband and a father, all I want to do is keep my wife and children safe."

Turning to Brian Willis, he said, "Mr. Willis, when you came between my wife and me, I saw you as a threat. I realize now that I overreacted and I'm sorry for any injury I may have caused you. Would you please accept my apology?"

He held out his hand to shake, and the young man took it. Several flashbulbs popped at that moment, and Willis said, "Yes, yes, of course."

Elliot smiled. "Thank you." Looking back at the crowd, he said, "Now, I know you are here for a statement on the Czarhyskinsky case. I don't know what to say except that being the lead detective just means I get to do all the paperwork. Things like this are always a team effort. My partner, Detective Beck, is the one who actually put the cuffs on him, and she's the one who collected the reports and files from other police departments across the country. Detectives Munch and Tutuola from my squad proved that the suspect lived in all of the different cities when the crimes took place. ADA Novak got us the warrants we needed, and Dr. Warner from the ME's office collected and processed the suspect's DNA. When my family emergency arose, Captain Cragen saw to it that my responsibilities in the case were handled by other detectives. But the real heroes are the women who were brave enough to come forward and report the attacks. Without them, there would have been no case."

He looked at the crowd for a moment before asking, "Are there any questions?"

There was a moment of chaos before Don pointed to one reporter, a woman with dark hair.

"Sandra Olvera, from _The Ledger_," she said. "Detective, now that the Beach Boys Rapist is in custody, to where do you think will he be extradited once he faces charges in New York?"

"The Beach Boys Rapist? Who thought of that?"

Sandra looked around and everyone shrugged. "It comes from the song 'California Girls' she explained. "'East Coast girls are hip; I really dig those styles they wear . . ." She said the lines rather than singing them.

"'And the Sothern girls with the way they talk . . .' yeah, yeah, I know the lyrics, I grew up on that music," Elliot cut her off. "Except that his pattern went the opposite direction."

The reporter shrugged and said, "It still seems to fit."

Elliot nodded doubtfully and said, "Well, Sandra, before I answer your question about extradition, I just want to say that I think giving these serial criminals catchy little names and titles is socially irresponsible. It encourages copycats, glamorizes violent crime, gives these criminals undeserved status and notoriety, and sends the dangerous message that this kind of behavior is cool.

"As for the extradition, you'll have to speak with ADA Casey Novak about that. Personally, I would like to see him face those capital murder charges in Missouri next and then go to Utah where he could face sentencing enhancements because all of his victims were of the same religion. After he has faced trial in all the other places where he committed rapes, he can go back to Missouri for his lethal injection."

Again there was a lot of talking, and this time, Elliot singled one person out to ask a question.

"Martin Jones, Channel Nine News. Were the twins born healthy and are mother and babies all doing well now?"

Elliot smiled. "Yes, they're all fine, they're beautiful and perfect and . . . just perfect, thanks for asking."

There were several "Awws" from the crowd at his obvious delight in fatherhood which gave Martin just enough of a pause to ask a follow-up question.

"Are these your first children?"

Elliot beamed. "You know, off the record, I could talk you to death about my family and friends and how great they all are, but considering the nature of my work, I don't want to make that information public knowledge."

As he was speaking, Casey approached. He leaned over for her to whisper in his ear, and when she did, he nodded and told the reporters, "If you'll excuse me, I am needed by my family. This is Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak. She'll be trying Neil Czarhyskinsky here in New York."

It had taken Elliot longer to console Olivia than it had taken Alex to calm the babies, but eventually her adrenaline rush gave out and she slumped against him in exhaustion. She apologized again for making a scene and they all assured her she had nothing to be sorry for. Then Rick had driven them all to Brooklyn.

_The Stabler Residence  
2581 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn  
7:35 P.M., Monday, October 31, 2001_

There was a small welcome home party for them when they arrived at the house, just the fourteen people they considered family. Elliot's kids, Jim, Nathalie, Kathy, Munch, Fin, Dani, and Ginny Marchesi were waiting when they arrived, and Cragen, Casey, and Alex came in a few minutes later.

Kathy had brought along a gift of six "baby's first year" picture frames with an oval for a picture from every month of the baby's first year of life. Four were for Elliot, and they were filled with pictures of each of his older children. The other two were for Olivia. Elliot had sent Kathy newborn pictures of the twins from his camera phone and those were already in place. Of course the thoughtful gift had made Olivia cry, again, but this time she was able to laugh while apologizing for making yet another scene.

The party only lasted about half an hour after which, in deference to the happy family's need for privacy and Olivia's need for rest, the guests cleaned up after themselves and said their goodbyes.

By six o'clock, Elliot and Olivia found themselves in the nursery admiring their achievements. They had both girls nestled closely together in one crib and the stood at either end gazing down on them. The babies were both bright-eyed and cooing softly.

Looking around for a moment, Elliot said, "You guys did a fantastic job in here."

Olivia smiled and said, "Thank you, but the kids did all the hard work."

"I love the way the picture frames turned out," he said, "the way the mat is the color of the wall and the frame matches the opposite wall."

"That was Maureen's idea."

They went quiet for several more minutes and just stood at the ends of the crib staring down at their tiny, beautiful babies.

Elliot sighed. "We have been so blessed," he said.

She nodded. "We have a lot to be thankful for."

They'd traveled a long road to get here, first as partners, then lovers, and finally husband and wife, but always, always, even in the worst of times, as friends. Olivia's pregnancy hadn't been without its rough spots, and the past weekend had been a horrible nightmare for both of them, but right now, just for tonight, life was perfect.

"They're both just beautiful," Elliot said. "Just like their mother."

Olivia smiled and blushed slightly. "They have a lot of their father in them, too," she said.

Elliot just grinned and reached out to run his finger along the sole of one tiny foot. Alex cooed and pulled her foot away as if it tickled. He did it again to Casey and she blew raspberries at him. As she watched him smiling at his girls, Olivia got an idea. Moving over to the rocking chair, she dragged it across the floor closer to the window seat. Then she got the blanket out of the unused crib, folded it into fourths, and placed it over one of the armrests.

"Elliot, come sit."

"Huh? No, Liv, that's for you," he protested. "You should probably be sitting in it right now and resting."

She shook her head. "I'm fine. This chair has been in your family for generations. I think you should have the honor of being the first to rock them to sleep in it."

"Liv, I only have one good arm. I might drop them."

"I won't let you," she promised. "Now quit being stubborn and sit."

He gave her a mildly frustrated look but obeyed. She helped him take his injured arm out of the sling and move it down inside the folded blanket so it would be out of the way and nicely cushioned. Then she got Casey out of the crib and brought her to him. He held her in his good arm while she went back to the crib for Alexandra. Baby Alex nestled perfectly in the softly padded curve of his cast. Liv had positioned the rocker so she could keep one hand on Alex and make sure she didn't fall and in this way, Elliot was able to hold both of his girls at once.

For a moment he smiled down at them in adoration. Then he looked up at Olivia and grinned, his eyes brimming with joy. Looking down at the girls again, he began slowly rocking and after several minutes, in a sweet, soft voice filled with love and awe, he began singing the song his mother had often sung for him when he was very young.

_Golden slumbers kiss your eyes.  
Smiles awake you when you rise.  
Sleep pretty loved ones, do not cry,  
And I will sing a lullaby.  
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby._

_Life's cares are heavy, therefore sleep,  
And Father a safe watch here will keep.  
Sleep pretty loved ones, do not cry,  
And I will sing a lullaby.  
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby._

Olivia watched the girls doze off as Elliot rocked and sang to them and smiled because she knew she had never done a better thing in her life.

The End

* * *

To hear the lullaby Elliot was singing, search "golden slumbers kiss" on Yahoo. Click the KIDiddles link (should be the first one). Scroll about halfway down the page and you will see a little mouse holding some musical notes. There is a player control underneath him. The lyrics I have do not match the ones on the KIDiddles page because I am using the words I learned as a child, but they still fit the melody perfectly. 


End file.
